Best Thing I Ever Ate: Fogo de Chao

It's time for another installment of "The Best Thing I Ever Ate." I don't think I have a category for this one, although "Overall Restaurant" might be a good one. Fogo de Chao is the gold standard of a dining experience for me. The atmosphere, service, variety, flavors, etc. are all excellent and it is truly unique. It's the type of restaurant where you can be dressed up for a fancy occasion and it's perfectly appropriate, or you can be in a polo shirt and khaki shorts and no one will look at you weird. Unlike some fancy/high class restaurants that care more about making everything pretty on a plate or using bizarre ingredients, Fogo focuses on the food and providing the best flavors possible. The Brazilian churrascaria has a limited number of locations around the country and in Brazil, and you are in for a treat if you ever get to visit one.

The concept behind the churrascaria, which means "barbeque" in Portuguese, is that trained gauchos prepare a variety of meats over an open fire and serve the meats fresh off the fire. Fogo has this down to an art. You sit at a table with a card - one side is green and the other is red. When you turn your card so it's facing green, gauchos come to your table with different meats and offer you cuts of whatever they have. When you have everything you want, simply flip your card to red and enjoy what's on your plate. Ready for more? Flip it back to green to start the entire process over. This continues for as long as you like. The amazing part of this is...the chefs aren't bringing little pieces of grilled chicken, flank steak, and grissly pork chops to your table. It's gourmet in every way. You have the oh-so-difficult responsibility of enjoying garlic seasoned prime sirloin, bacon wrapped filets, prime ribeye, beef ribs, leg of lamb, bacon wrapped chicken, and more. It's a carnivore's delight! Wait, did I mention this is the second part of the meal?

For people who have always thought Fogo de Chao is all about the meat...you're right. But it's also all about amazing vegetables. Prior to your feast of grilled meats, there is a salad bar that I'm pretty sure features vegetables from the Garden of Eden. The salad bar has over 30 items including: fresh mozzarella, artichoke bottoms, roasted peppers, sun dried tomatoes, aged parmesan, jumbo asparagus, smoked salmon, and prosciutto. I'm partial to fresh vegetables, but I don't know if I have ever enjoyed a salad bar as much as this one. I'm the one at the salad bar piling so many things on my plate that it becomes a balancing act to see if I can carry it all back to the table. I don't know why I do this since you can return for as many trips as you like, but I never learn. I could talk about the fresh crunch of the peppers, the juiciness of the sliced tomatoes, or the rich flavor of the fresh mozzarella but you really have to experience it for yourself. Last time Nicole and I went to Fogo de Chao for dinner, we skipped the meat portion of the meal and only had the salad bar and ate non-stop for 2 hours. I think the wait staff was in awe.

If the salad bar and meat courses aren't enough, you also receive side dishes that are served to your table. Polenta, garlic mashed potatoes, caramelized bananas, & cheese rolls (pao de queijo) are all served as you enjoy your meal. I think the polenta, mashed potatoes, & bananas are all pretty pedestrian and not worth the space in your stomach, but the cheese rolls...OH MY WORD! These warm little pillows of goodness are magical. They appear to be a pop-over (we found a recipe and will be attempting to make them) that have a perfect texture on the outside and an airy, soft inside. When these are hot, they are unbeatable. Seriously...speechless.

The entire experience at Fogo de Chao can be overwhelming. There are so many different foods to enjoy and only so much room in your stomach. It's not cheap (Dinner: $50 for meat/salad bar, $25 for salad bar), but I think it's completely worth it. You have to pace yourself and remember the most important thing is to enjoy your meal and not leave feeling completely miserable. And if you think about it, $50 for as many gourmet meats and vegetables you want isn't THAT bad. It's not something I'd pay on a regular basis, but it's great for a special occasion or want to do something different. So for the best thing I ever ate, Fogo de Chao takes a number of different spots: Best Salad Bar, Best Bread (or whatever the cheese rolls should be considered), Best Meat, Best Restaurant. Simply put...it's just the best.

 

The Charm City

We are not in a position to be able to travel a lot, but it's usually a lot of fun when we do. Nicole and I joined the rest of my family last week and took my brother to Annapolis, MD for his induction into the U.S. Naval Academy. We had a great time in Annapolis and I'll have another post about that entire experience, but Nicole and I decided to spend a couple extra days in Maryland and head up to Baltimore, the Charm City.

Baltimore was a quick 30 minute drive north of Annapolis and we spent most of the day Friday and Saturday there. We booked a room through HI Hostels and stayed in their hostel, which was downtown and not too far from the Inner Harbor area. The accommodations were decent (although hot) and provided the basics we needed: a bed to sleep in, a bathroom to shower, and a place to park our car. We didn't spend much time in the hostel but they seem to do a good job of providing resources and things to do for guests and I'd definitely consider using them again when we travel to other cities where H.I. offers accomodations.

When we weren't sleeping, we tried to do as much exploring as we could. We visited the campus of Johns Hopkins University and checked out some of the local highlights around that area, including an ice cream shop that served veggie ice cream and the Baltimore Museum of Art. The woman working in the ice cream shop was very rude and their ice cream was nothing special (a hint of vegetable in vanilla ice cream) but the art museum was really cool (and it happened to be free). I know very little about art and find most of it boring, but it's fun to see things from other perspectives and it's usually good people watching to say the least.

Baltimore seems to be divided into multiple neighborhoods/communities and many of them have their own unique culture and identity. We weren't able to spend much time in many of the communities, but we definitely wanted to visit the area known as Little Italy. It was one of the coolest city neighborhoods I've seen. As we walked down the streets, we were hit with the amazing smells of Italian food cooking in numerous restaurants that sit in nearly every street corner. There were benches where people could sit by the street and hang out for an afternoon and a public bocce ball court where elderly Italian men challenged each other in some very competitive games. We even saw people gathering in a parking lot for what appears to be a Friday night tradition in Little Italy - there is a large sheet on the side of a building that serves as a movie screen and hundreds of people set up their chairs to have a spot for movie night right in the middle of the neighborhood. The movie night also sits between a local pizza shop on one side and a pastry shop on the other - classic. Everything about the place promoted community and family.

Bocce Ball!

Movie Night!

Along with hanging out in Little Italy, we tried to hit the other major spots in Baltimore. We took a water taxi to Fells Point, the historic neighborhood that still has cobblestone streets. We went through the World Famous Lexington Market, a market full of food vendors, profanity, and Baltimore character. We walked around Camden Yards, the beautiful baseball stadium that is worthy of a much better team. And we took in the sites of the Inner Harbor, which is the most obvious tourist spot in the city but still cool. The Barnes & Noble on the harbor is the coolest B&N I've seen, featuring a warehouse design and patios where you can sit and look out over the water.

We can't go somewhere without trying lots of food, and Baltimore was no different. Aside from the ice cream we had at Dominion Ice Cream, we had some excellent food. We decided to be crazy on Friday night and have dinner at Fogo de Chao, the famous Brazilian churrascaria. We took the healthy(er) option of the salad bar and skipped the meat portion of the meal, which saved us a lot of money and allowed us to gorge ourselves on their amazing salad bar. I'm pretty sure Fogo will receive a few "Best Thing I Ever Ate" posts in the coming weeks. And when I previously mentioned the cool pizza and pastry shops in Little Italy, I forgot to mention we visited both. I had an awesome meatball sub from Isabella's, the pizza and sandwich shop, and we tried the cannoli (which I thought was the best), cream puffs, and napoleons from Vaccaro's, the pastry shop. We could spend years trying all the other restaurants that looked good and I hope to be able to get back to Baltimore to see what other great food they're serving.

One thing that made our two days in Baltimore so enjoyable was the ability to use public transportation. The city offers bus service to the main neighborhoods and attractions on a service called the Charm City Circulator. There are three routes running through the main parts of the city with multiple stops and you usually don't have to wait more than 10 minutes for a pick up from any of the locations. The stops are well marked, the buses are clean, and the drivers are friendly. And the best part...using the Charm City Circulator is FREE! It made getting around the city very easy and it enabled us to see more of the unique things Baltimore had to offer. Being able to ride the bus kept us from worrying about walking everywhere and figuring out if we'd need to take our car and then find a place to park.  I was extremely impressed with this service and I hope many other cities will work to offer something similar to this. 

   

In all, it was a great getaway for us. The weather ended up being nice and we were able to see many different things. We hope to get back sometime and see even more! Here are a few additional pictures: