My wife and I had a dinner reservation on NYE to celebrate our anniversary. It would be our 3rd time returning to Fogo in Minneapolis. Our first two experiences (several years prior) were excellent, so we were excited to return. We arrived slightly earlier than our reservation time, as we knew downtown would be busy.

We stood in line at the front door for about 5 minutes to check in at the host stand. The host informed us that it would be around 15-20 minutes before our table was ready, which we thought was a little long given that we were on time to our reservation, but ultimately not a huge deal. She handed us a buzzer. My wife went to the bathroom while I tried to order us drinks at the bar. I found an open spot at the end of the bar and was waiting for a bartender to walk over with a drink menu. After a few minutes of waiting for a bartenders attention, I decided to move to a spot that had opened up at the middle of the bar, closer to where all the bartenders were. I picked up a drink menu that was left on the bar from the previous couple, however it was covered in something sticky and the bar top was a mess. Again, not a huge deal, it's just surprising to see at a higher class restaurant. I read over the menu for a minute or two while still waiting for one of the bartenders to take my order. As I continued to wait, my wife returned from the bathroom. She told me that it was absolutely disgusting in there. She said she had to wait in line to use the bathroom because 2 of the stalls were so filthy that they were unusable. She also said the entire women's bathroom floor was soaking wet from a leaking toilet that had towels wrapped around the base. We waited at the bar together for another 5 minutes, waiting for someone behind the bar to even look at us. No one ever did. I spent nearly 15 minutes waiting at the bar and not 1 of the 4 people working behind it ever even made eye contact with me... Our buzzer went off so we gave up on the bar and went back to the host stand. She took our buzzer and asked us to wait in an area around the corner. We stood and waited in this area for about 5 more minutes wondering why they buzzed us if they didn't have our table ready yet. We stood and watched as 5 people behind the host stand were chaotically trying to figure out what was going on when one of them finally told us to follow them. They led us towards what appeared to be an open table near the bathrooms, but as we got closer they saw that it hadnt been cleaned off yet. They stopped, turned, and walked us in a completely different direction back across the restaurant towards another open table that was in the process of getting cleaned off. We sat down as they rushed to clean off our table. While we waited for our server, we opened the menus which were dirty. The table cloth was also dirty and appeared to have mold spots in multiple places. As we waited for our server, I got up to use the Men's bathroom which I found to be nearly as filthy as the Women's. I swatted at some fruit flies as I walked out from the hallway of the bathroom. When I sat back down, I saw more fruit flies flying around near our table. That was really concerning. My wife and I were considering leaving just as our server came over. She asked if we were doing "the full experience" (which I laughed in my head because up until now, it has been an awful experience). She told us to help ourselves to the salad bar. We walked over to stand in line at the salad bar and both of us immediately looked at eachother at the same time because there was a strong sour / rotten smell. At that point, we had both seen enough. We grabbed our things and walked out.

I get that it was very busy being NYE, but if they have to lower their service quality down to that level because they are busy, they shouldn't even open the doors. If management allows the customer facing part of the restaurant to be in that condition, what does the kitchen look like? Is it even sanitary? It honestly felt like a rundown old country buffet. Management should be ashamed or better yet fired.