Fogo de Chão Brazilian Steakhouse — Restaurant in Seattle

I had a reservation for 7:30pm on 7/27 that was made for my birthday. I love a Brazilian steak house and was really excited to go as I hadn’t done anything for my birthday and this was going to be my event of the day that I had chosen. I’ve come here in the past and enjoyed myself so was excited to repeat my previous experience. Upon arrival you could tell they were busy or maybe understaffed, which I understand it was a sunday and a day they may not have been expecting to actually be as busy as it was. We stood in the lobby for a bit with another couple while we waited for the hostess so come check in with us which took a minute and this was my first indicator they were overwhelmed. The people in-front of us are a walk in, they checked in and then we inform her where here for a reservation (which we are on time for) and she says it’s going to be about a 15 minute wait. It was 15 minutes and I was completely fine waiting, I could tell the hostess was stressed and a little overwhelmed and she was incredibly sweet during the entire process so I wasn’t trying to add any stress on. I would like it to be made clear before I continue, my negative experience really had nothing to do with the staff from the hostess to whoever our server was and all the people that checked in with our table everyone was incredibly Kind, And I could tell was really trying to create a good experience. They were just all overwhelmed Which led to us having a bad experience, which has zero reflection on our interactions with the servers one on one, they were all fantastic and amazing from beginning to end. After waiting in the lobby for a bit for a reservation, I hear my name being called to sit. When I look up, the hostess has approached the couple that walked in before us. By the time I process what’s happening they’ve already entered the restaurant. I wasn’t too upset because mistakes happen and the couple did say that they were me, which was not the hostess’s fault. I was fine waiting a couple more minutes and wasn’t going to make a big deal about it. From where I was sitting, I could see the hostess talking to the managers, and I saw the moment the hostess realized she made a mistake and sat the walk-ins instead of us. I could see them and hear parts of their conversation trying to find a place to put us as quickly as possible. I didn’t mind waiting longer, but I did appreciate them trying to remedy the situation as quickly as they could. I see them pull out and separate a tiny table shoved in between two tables at the base of the stairs. They call my name again and they sit us in between this tiny squished table right by the entrance, my partner is 6 7” and I’m 5 10” so we are not the most comfortable at this table, also not to mention we can hear everything everyone is saying next to us, and vice versa. I look up from where we’ve been sat and directly in my eyesight is the couple that they mistook for us and there sitting at a great booth by the window. Now I can’t help but feel upset seeing them at a great spot while I’m shoved here. We get up to go to the salad bar. Everything is mislabeled and a lot of things are completely empty. I have allergens and because things aren’t properly labeled I wasn’t able choose very many things. It takes a long time for us to get our first piece of meat because they keep missing us since our table is shoved in, they’ll get the tables around us and gradually ours. Eventually, we just asked for our check after only trying a couple pieces of meat and going to the salad bar once. Our server asked if we were sure when we asked for our check because we had been there for such a short time but honestly at this point I was just upset, not able to eat anything and just wanted to go. We spent over $200 to wait around. Was planning to be there for a while, drink, celebrate, instead went to a bar down the street to enjoy something. It truly was such a sour experience and really ruined The one thing I was excited for on my birthday, so just a warning to anyone planning on spending a special occasion...

I don’t normally write reviews, but my experience at this location was so horrible a couple weekends ago that I decided to write one in hopes this location can make some changes so this doesn’t happen to others, or at least warn others this may be their experience, too. It happened on November 8th. My boyfriend and I went here for my boyfriend’s birthday dinner. I made reservations well in advance, but it was a Friday night and the Seattle Symphony had just gotten out so it was packed. I did put on the reservation though that we were celebrating a birthday. We had to wait a bit for a table for 2, but that wasn’t much of an issue. They sat us in the side corner of the restaurant back behind the bar next to the server’s side station. They don’t normally serve a full course meal in the bar area, but since it was busy I think they made the change. We were upset because we were all dressed up and wanted to sit in the main dining area but we didn’t say anything. We were happy to be sat. We got both the bar menu and the regular menu. The first server that sat us was phenomenal. She was from Brazil and so friendly. She got our drinks right away and we told her we were here for a birthday, even though it was kind of obvious as I brought presents with me for my boyfriend. After that, we got another server. She was easily the worst server I’ve ever had. It took her forever to come to us to ask us what we wanted to eat. My boyfriend got the unlimited service dinner and I got the cauliflower steak as I’m a vegetarian. The menu states that all entrees get the salad buffet but when we asked the server about that she told us it would be 30 extra dollars so we said never mind. Didn’t make any sense to us, though, as that’s clearly listed on the menu. They brought out his side dishes right away but my food never came. My boyfriend didn’t want to be rude to me, so he waited to eat. My food took well over 45 mins to get to the table. By that time, all of his sides were cold. Also nobody came and told us why the food was taking that long or apologized, it was wild. They did not get my boyfriend new sides, even though they’re supposed to be unlimited and nobody came to check up on us, even though I could see our server standing right next to us at the server station. The cauliflower was so well seasoned though, so I didn’t say anything. For dinner, only 3 different meats made it to our table for my boyfriend. We had to ask the server multiple times for them to send more people over and she was really rude about it. She finally got some people to come over to us, but he still didn’t get all the types of meat listed on the menu so we were annoyed. Then she cleared our plates and brought the check before we were even finished. So weird! She was really rude to me the whole time that my boyfriend asked me what I did to make her mad, jokingly. She was only rude when talking to me, not my boyfriend. After hearing her talk to her coworkers, I just assumed she didn’t like women. Finally, I asked her if we could get dessert because we were celebrating a birthday. We got dessert and finished it. I believe typically you get a free dessert on your birthday but we did not. Not a big issue, but with how horrible the service was it was annoying. Then we waited 30 mins for the final check even though our server was just standing in the side station talking to her coworkers, and we could hear every word of what they were saying. I had a 35 dollar off card, and our server still charged me for the full price. She had to charge my card twice after I said something, which just added annoyance to the experience. We left without saying anything because I usually hold my tongue, but this was seriously the worst service I’ve ever had my boyfriend and I still can’t believe it was real life so I decided to write a review. We felt like we were in the twilight zone. I hope they do better in the future but we won’t...

One of the worst experiences I’ve had in a restaurant, this place is certainly no longer worth the high cost.

Had an 8:45pm reservation for my friend’s birthday. We walked up to the host stand and waited around 10 minutes for anyone to greet us. The restaurant was moderately busy but not packed, finally a host approached and was kind but seemed to be preoccupied. He left to ready the table and we waited about 10+ more minutes to be sat. We finally got to our table and the server was very nice and knew a lot about the menu, took our drink order and said food would be coming shortly. We waited and waited for meat to start arriving and it very slowly trickled out. Our server disappeared not to be seen again until midway through the meal. We never received our drinks until I asked after waiting 15+ minutes for it. I had to flag down another tables server to ask about the drinks and they came out shortly after. We had probably been there for 30 minutes and only had seen 3-4 cuts of meat.

Food was barely coming out of the kitchen. After not eating much at all, our server asked if we wanted “any more” cuts of meat, as if we must be almost finished. We said a few but honestly were confused why we hadn’t seen many cuts or options brought out. We had all dined here previously and the food had never been this slow or almost nonexistent before. It felt like it must have been close to the end of the night and they didn’t want to make anymore meat but we still had 30+ minutes till closing. We had to ask our server again for more specific cuts to be brought out and even after this, the server who brought the meat seemed very annoyed to serve us. Still well before closing time… we continued to ask multiple times for cuts to be brought out with some of them being denied because they couldn’t make anymore. I finally just said to bring anything they had in the kitchen. Really ruining the fun of the supposed “experience”

Our server then brought a desert menu while we were STILL hoping for more food. We ordered our friend’s birthday dessert and tried to finish up. At 10pm they immediately turned all the lights up in the restaurant incredibly bright, with multiple tables still sitting. It felt so uncomfortable, we didn’t plan to stay long after close but I’m surprised they would be so quick to push us out of there. Birthday dessert came out in a to go box (with a candle ha!) and it was clear we had overstayed our welcome. On top of this it somehow took forever to get our check and get closed out, surprising considering the attitude in the restaurant.

This place is NOT cheap at all, we came here to have a fun celebratory dinner and left feeling very dissatisfied and not very full. We used to love this restaurant and how exciting it was, I don’t believe I’ll ever go back to Fogo de Chão after how we were...