What Really Makes Fogo De Chão's Meat So Delicious

The United States is certainly a pioneer when it comes to developing new and innovative forms of gluttony. After all, we gave the world the endless abundance that is Golden Corral, and not one but 17 different chains of all-you-can-eat buffets. But there's one area of eating to excess where we've been squarely bested: the Brazilian rodizio steakhouse, where finely trained gauchos wander a dining room with skewers of savory meats and cut off as much as you want for as long as you like.

In the U.S., no place does this better than Fogo de Chão, an upscale rodizio restaurant with locations nationwide. Its meat just tastes ... different than other Brazilian steakhouses, offering richer, stronger, and more intricate flavors. So why does Fogo de Chão's meat taste so darned good? We headed to its newest location in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to find out and got a behind-the-scenes tour with General Manager Wandering Oliveira and Southeast Area Director Rudimar Bonfada. They hipped us to the whole process, from picking the right meats to aging, seasoning, and serving them.

The flavor of the meat customers get sliced delicately onto their plates begins with the raw material: the beef. Each of Fogo de Chão's cuts is rated USDA Choice or higher, according to both Bonifada and Oliveira, a sure sign of quality that ensures every steak that glides by you is some of the best beef in the country. So what does USDA Choice mean, exactly?

Well, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's website, beef is graded in order to make business transactions easier, so purchasers know the quality of beef they're paying for before it shows up at the door. USDA inspectors visit slaughterhouses and packing facilities to evaluate the product, rating beef as prime, choice, or select. Prime is the top grade you'd find at places like Morton's The Steakhouse and Red the Steakhouse. Next up is choice, which USDA describes as still a very high-quality cut, only with "less marbling than prime." Select is the lowest grade, and though still very good, it has the least marbling and is the leanest of the three. Beyond that, producers make ungraded and commercial beef, which are typically store-brand cuts.

Once a steak has been properly aged, gauchos come early in the morning to begin prepping it for the day. This prep work includes marinating stuff like chicken and lamb, putting meat on skewers, wrapping certain cuts in bacon, and beginning the cooking process for cuts that take longer. Most Fogo de Chao locations have gauchos working in two shifts, and according to Oliveira they work in teams to ensure the meat is perfect and everything runs smoothly. Each team of gauchos is responsible for a specific cut of meat, whether that's picanha, filet mignon, bacon-wrapped chicken, or anything else. The morning teammate generally gets everything ready, and the evening teammate serves.

"[Gauchos] that come in in the morning, they're more responsible to prepare," Fogo de Chão Ft. Lauderdale General Manager Wandering Oliveira told us. "We know our reservations ... how many skewers we gotta have. So the person that is gonna come for the evening half, he'll be all set up because his partner will [have] made sure that everything was nice on stage four."

Fogo de Chão puts their gauchos through some serious training, and while Ft. Lauderdale General Manager Wandering Oliveira says they have some guidelines for how long certain cuts should sit over the fire, the meat preparation is more an art than a science. So the gauchos, who are responsible for cooking the meat as well as serving it, operate more on sense and feel than on a set time that something needs to be cooked. It's a little like your dad when he cooked steaks in the backyard: Did he need a timer? Of course not. So it reasons the pros at Fogo don't either.

One might think slicing beef for hungry guests and cooking meat would be a tough balancing act. But Oliveira says the gauchos have it mastered. "Sometimes [it] can be tricky, right?" he asks rhetorically. "Because fire is there and it's hot. So if you don't pay attention, if you're not on top of your meat ... you can burn it. ... But that doesn't happen. [The gauchos], they're really proud of what they do and they take accountability for it."

Fogo de Chão keeps a consistent lineup of steaks, spelled out easily on its website so you can start salivating before you even make a reservation. Those include some standards you already know and love like filet mignon and porterhouse. But also some special Brazilian steak cuts like the iconic picanha, the circular-grained top sirloin that's the prime part of the cut, sliced extra then at the table. You'll also find beef ancho, which is essentially a bone-in ribeye, and fraldinha, which is a heavily marbled bottom sirloin popular in southern Brazil.

But unless you're getting rodizio every week, you'll likely see at least a few things different every time you go to Fogo de Chão. Yes, the salad bar changes up its offerings, but Fogo de Chão Ft. Lauderdale General Manager Wandering Oliveira says they tweak some of the meats by season too. "We will add a couple here and there for the season," he says. "We might bring in a different cut of ribeye ... or a porterhouse.  We always stick with our main core means, but every season we try to bring something different."

While it might reason that a Brazilian steakhouse would source it's beef from, ya know, Brazil, Fogo de Chão's supply chain carbon footprint isn't that big. According to Southeast Area Director Rudimar Bonfada, all of Fogo de Chao's beef comes from the good old' U.S. of A., sourced from the heart of cattle country in the great Midwest. While he wouldn't elaborate on which states specifically, it's still comforting to know the beef comes from relatively close by.

"We source our beef mostly from suppliers who are leaders in sustainable business practice," he told Mashed in an exclusive interview. "Starting with the suppliers we work with, [who are] committed to serving the most wholesome, safest food." Again he did not elaborate on which, "sustainable business practices" he was referring to. But minimizing fuel and transportation costs in sourcing beef is always a good first step.

With such flavorful meat, some might assume that Fogo de Chão has a proprietary spice blend it puts on all its steaks to make them taste so delicious. This is not at all the case. The secret to Fogo de Chão's great flavor: Simple rock salt. Seriously, during our entire behind-the-scenes tour all we saw put on the meat was rock sea salt, a simple-yet-effective seasoning that brings out all the wonders of what Fogo de Chão grills. "We get questions a lot about what we use in our meat," says Ft. Lauderdale General Manager Wandering Oliveira. "People get surprised a lot with the answer that we just use sea salt."

Of course, it's not a reckless Salt Bae sprinkling of rock salt that makes the meat so good. How it's applied, and how much, is also part of gaucho training, and though relatively simple it is of utmost importance. "Our gauchos go through such a rigorous training, even how to salt the meat on the grill," says Southeast Area Director Rudimer Bonfada. "We eye it. Once the gauchos get in the habitual consistency of doing this every day ... it's all done by eye. They develop such an expertise to get to that level."

Steak is the main attraction at Fogo de Chão, to be sure. But guests might be well served to check out some of the other meats the restaurant offers. Roving the dining room, you'll also see pork chops, pork rib, pork loin, and sausages, each grilled with the same attention to detail and meticulous care as the trademark steaks.

One can't-miss item circulating on skewers is Fogo de Chão's lamb chops and prime lamb picanha. Both are marinated in a recipe completely different from the one the restaurant uses for chicken, this one is made up of white wine, lemon, and epic amounts of mint. The result is a crisp, citrusy bite that contrasts the richness of the lamb. The mint gives it an herbal finish that makes the chops taste almost like a savory tea, a flavor you likely won't find on menus elsewhere.