Cuisine: Brazilian / Steakhouse
Yessir, I will take more meat. That’s really the only vaguely inappropriate phrase you’ll need to know at Fogo de Chäo, the almost ubiquitous Brazilian steakhouse that has taken over every mall in the US. Because you don’t come here unless you’re into the meat. Sure, they have a salad bar, but that shit is for suckers. They also have chicken. Don’t do it. Make steak happen.
This particular location is at the Willowbrook Mall in Wayne. Not exactly what one would call a classy mall. As far as malls go. Not exactly the type of place you expect to blow almost $400 on a meal. No, this is more of a food court, Taco Bell kind of place. So it was with some skepticism that we packed up the car for a trip out to the mall for Hipster Jr.’s birthday dinner. It was his call. So we drove by the Cheesecake Factory. And the Dave & Buster’s and the Yard House and the P.F. Chang’s. You get the idea. And after figuring out that they put the damn place on the other side of the Macy’s where we couldn’t find it… we found it. And walked in to the sinking sun to be faced with a very steakhouse-y looking place that, at first glance, seemed completely empty. Because it was a Wednesday. And, no, we’re not weirdo parents who make our kids go to dinner mid-week just for the hell of it. Hipster Jr. had to go back to school and we had to squeeze in this visit to eat steak before he took off.
I felt bad, honestly. We are going to awkwardly sit in an empty restaurant gorging on cow. But they brought us around a corner and there sat a whole bunch of people doing the same. An odd amount of people, actually. Especially to be eating an expensive meal in a mall. On a Wednesday. They couldn’t all be there for their son’s birthdays… The service started off rough. I ain’t gonna lie. The adults ordered drinks, and they almost kind of showed up. Well, they showed up at someone else’s table. And their’s half-showed-up at ours. The server was super-confused. So a maybe-floor manager came over, kind of looked at and maybe smelled the drinks and straightened things out eventually. But not before letting us know that the screw up was definitely not her fault. Camaraderie, am I right? Luckily this was the only real SNAFU and was just a really minor inconvenience. If not an entertaining one.
The Jr.s definitely made some rookie mistakes with the salad bar. Hipster Jr. ate way to much lox. Hipster Jr. Jr. committed the cardinal sin of getting bread. Damn kids. I got some beets or something and a little lox and a little squid and maybe one little wedge of cheese. I don’t remember. Because it’s the steak, baby. The servers coming over with those skewers of beef. Pass on the lamb. Pass on the pork. Pass on the bacon-wrapped nonsense. Definitely pass on any poultry and leaky sausages. Grab the hunk of meat with your tongs and just hold on as they slice it off with a giant knife. Flip your little placard to green to get some more. Flip it to red to be a giant p*ssy. But make sure you eat all the different cuts. They’re all decent. There’s top this and bottom that. All with Portuguese names that further confuse the naming convention. But a filet is a filet and other cuts are what they are. I think they aim for a medium rare, but obviously with all these spits roasting, the cook can be inconsistent from steak to steak. To my liking, they generally go a little under — there was nothing much that went anywhere beyond medium rare for the most part. I’m not sure what morons who like their meat grey do at this place, but they don’t deserve to be happy.
Our dinner reached a point where I was the only one still eating. Hipster Jr. Jr. probably ate $20 worth. Hipster Jr. Jr. may have eaten $30 worth of smoked salmon, but his steak intake was paltry compared to his usual appetite. At some juncture I could see the look on their faces, and it was judgey. I flipped my card to red, folded my napkin and gave in. I could have kept eating, but shame and an aging heart stopped me. I’ll say, it’s fun to have a variety of stuff. They didn’t have the beef rib, which was disappointing, but I’ll live. It’s indulgent enough. Though, your return on investment may vary. We probably could have saved ourselves some cash had we just ordered four different steaks (which come with the market table salad bar thing) and just split the four steaks amongst us. But that’s not the real Brazilian steakhouse experience, right?
1400 Willowbrook Mall Rd. – Wayne
973/291-3522
fogodechao.com/location/wayne