Fogo de Chão Brazilian Steakhouse — Restaurant in Town of North Hempstead

Disclaimer: I have been to all Fogo de Chão steakhouses in NYC and will be comparing all of them to each other.

TLDR Main Points: -This location has the best food compared to all other Fogo’s and it’s because of their oven. -Layout of the restaurant gives enough room for everyone. -The Bathrooms are clean! -MAKE A RESERVATION FOR DINNER.

Best Food This Fogo has the best food compared to its sister locations. The reason? This Fogo uses a COAL OVEN to cook its food and it shows. All of the meat is cooked to perfection. From rare to well done, all ranges of their meat is superior. The meats TASTE DIFFERENT. It tastes crispier, juicier, retains more flavor. Its flavor is meticulously crafted from the kitchen to your plate. Let’s talk about sides. This Fogo has all the sides from its sister locations but what makes this location a cut above the rest is how organized, spacious and CLEAN their buffet area is. Queens their buffet in a corner which makes it difficult for people to go around. Brooklyn - Flatbush location has their buffet next to the kitchen which… is bad idea in my opinion because the heat from the kitchen will affect the freshness of everything on ice. And Manhattan’s location is similar to the Long Island location but tighter. I get it, it’s the city. Space is a luxury. Cool. That doesn’t change the efficient layout of the restaurant.

Layout This Fogo has the most space AND parking in its location. It’s also extremely convenient place to be due to Roosevelt Mall being less than 5 minutes away. Inside, everyone has more than enough leg room to move around for those 6ft and over. The Chairs are comfortable and the entire location is kept at a 65-70 degrees in the summer and 70 in the winter. As long as you’re eating, you won’t be cold. The biggest plus about the layout is how the tables are set up. In other locations, you’re sitting right next to each other. At this location, there’s roughly 3-4ft of room. You don’t feel like you’re participating in someone else’s conversation.

Bathrooms. Okay, I mention this on all my posts because it’s equally important. Their bathrooms are clean. Not wiped down, not cleaned at the end of the day, not “good enough” until the day is over clean. The bathrooms are clean. AND they actually replace the air scents that go off every 7 min or so. I don’t walk into an explosion of smells when I walk in or puddle of water OR A STICKY FLOOR, I CAN’T STAND STICK FLOORS…. This Fogo is cleaned and maintained which shows how dedicated management is to the experience.

Reservations This is a peeve of mine where I’ll see other people reviewing and complain about not being seated in a timely manner. Did you make a reservation or did you just show up expect to treated as the founder of the establishment? MAKE A RESERVATION if you want to be seated ON TIME. You don’t like waiting? Plan a head and save yourself the embarrassment of waiting like everyone else. It’s the 21st century and you can make a reservation through google now. It’s not hard. Don’t complain if you’re trying to get a table on a weekend for dinner and you can’t get one.

If I could rate this location higher, I would. The staff here is extremely accommodating and will work with you as long as you’re respectful and ask. I went here once with my wife and asked to move around 2 different times and not only did they help us but we all laughed about it afterwards too. Any time I want to eat Fogo, I will go out of my way 1.5 hours to eat here with my wife and friends.

The Fogo experience is incredible, This location is the best out...

I will use the midtown location as a benchmark for this review. I am getting slightly older/vintage and can not eat like I used to. In my late teens and early twenties it was not uncommon to finish a porterhouse for 2 by myself with an appetizer, some bread, and a dessert. The usual porterhouse for 2 I would get would weigh anywhere from 40 to 50 oz (about 28 to 36 oz of meat itself.) Having been to numerous Brazilian bbqs, a few guys from work dragged me out to Fogo De Chao in midtown near the museum of modern art. The buffet selection was really good and the meat was juicy and delicious. It was memorable but was not a place I would go to on my own. I would feel the need to keep stuffing my face to get my price for admission back in sheer quantity. This would lead to me getting the meat sweats and almost passing out from too much meat.

My favorite cut of beef is usually ribeye but if at a Brazilian spot, I go for the picanha (which is top sirloin with the fat still on it.)

Which brings me to today. I am enjoying a day off from work and have no desire to drive/train it into the city for picanha but a fogo de chao opened in carle place. A quick 15 min drive later and I am seated for lunch.

The full experience is 39.95 for lunch which is not bad at all. I just wanted picanha so I ordered the 15 dollar market salad buffet option and a 8 dollar add on for picanha. As a beverage I went with a coconut creme signature cocktail.

The cocktail was delicious! I had a few sips of it and moved to my first appetizer plate of ceasar salad, grilled zucchini, grilled peppers, salami and prosciutto, some cheese, tomatoes and cucumbers. All of it was good. I think the location in the city had a bigger selection but not one hundred percent certain (didn't grab photos of the first time around.)

The picanha comes out medium. I prefer rare/med rare but the meat looked so good on the skewer so I took it. I requested some on the more rare side next and they did not disappoint. Definitely needs to be rare/med rare for the full flavor and texture but the more medium one did not disappoint either.

I went back to the buffet for rice/beans, some brown sugar pepper bacon, and more charcuterie. The bacon was phenomenal!!! I had to go back for seconds.

Sides were also brought out. Yucca fries, fried plantains, mashed potatoes, and Brazilian cheese bread. This is where they lose a star but they took care of it graciously.

There was a fine textured medium length hair in the brazilian bread. It was definitely not my hair. I brought it to the managers attention and was offered a new plate of bread and some dessert and coffee/tea. I declined and said the meal was delicious and stuff happens. If I didn't slow down from all the delicious food, I would have eaten it anyway.

Thank you for getting this far into my rambling review.

Food was great (minus that strand of hair), cocktail was delicious, and service was attentive.

I will return for lunch for sure the next time I am craving picanha.

Returned for dinner on 01/29/20...

Service was great and the market buffet and sides were the same as last visit.

The meat on the other hand was just a bit salty for me. I wouldn't say the meat was too salty, just on the salty side for me. Favorite is still the picanha with their sirloin and ribeye coming in as close favorites. The skirt steak and pork picanha were good also. I wasn't a fan of the sausage or bacon wrapped steak. The lamb was ok. I ran out of room so no chicken...

NO GO FOR FOGO!! This review is based off a package deal which was encouraged by the event planner since we had a large group of 22 people. I chose the “cut above package” which includes jumbo shrimp appetizer for the table, the fogo meat experience and 3 hours open bar, your choice of dessert water and soft drinks were also included in this package. Sides that came to the table were mash potatoes and sweet plantains. I agreed to this package because I feel my group would enjoy each part of this package. So I requested 1 hour cocktail hour by the bar and the 2 other hours at the table. She Natalya the event planner said no problem. She was very accommodating, for good reason. So let’s begin

We arrived hostess shows us the bar. I was the first to arrive. I flagged the bartender down and expressed we are having an hour cocktail hour for 22 people and we will be moving to dinner. He was extremely confused but took our order gave it to us in a rude fashion and never came back. I started to feel the unpreparedness of my event. I was introduce to 6 different people who claim they are managers and servers and hardly saw them or checked in on us, unless I flagged them down. Red flag. No one knew what was going on. Server management decided to take breaks during the dinner and not one person was stable to handle my group for at least 2 hours being there. Very unfortunate my employees work so hard throughout the year I thought this place would handle our group with white gloves given I’ve experienced this before at other restaurants during holiday events. So now, we all maybe had 2 cocktails each during 2 hours. Because they were killing time because of the package deal. We did not benefit from nothing taking the package. And money was not an option. I think I would have been better off doing Ala carte. They gained on our event we did not. They also started making the drinks very weak. It was very obvious. As the first confused bartender made the drink exactly as it should until he knew it was a package event. Another red flag. The mash potatoes came out with some bread no mains and 30 mins later they started bringing the meat out. Sides were already cold. No plates were given to us. I had to give plates out to my guests while the meats came. We were treated unfairly based off of poor planning on the restaurants part. We wanted to be treated well, That’s why I chose this place. So now they bring out the meats from the cheapest quality meat and your forced to take it because you don’t know when the next set of meat will arrive, so by the time my party time was ending the better quality meats arrives. And everyone was done at the point. The manager was the least favorable could not rectify anything, no matter the look on my face. I’m sad I had to give gratuity because they did not deserve one red cent. I will never attend this restaurant again neither will my group. There was one server Marianna she saved the last 45mins of the event based off her personality and getting things going a bit faster so we could leave. Very dissatisfying and disappointing

Do not book this place...