Finances & Money

Giant pile of meat: Priceless

Get your attention? Good. Don’t know why though. I’m not very productive at work right now because the whole team went to Fogo de Chao for lunch (on the company dime) as a going-away party for a coworker on our project. It’s a favorite location here, and this year I’ve gone 5 times already (only twice when the company paid)!

If you’re not familiar with Fogo de Chao, it’s a Brazilian BBQ, which means the cooks walk around with giant skewers of meat from the grill. You have a little card with red on one side and green on the other. As long as you have the green side showing, they’ll stop at your plate and serve meat. The meats range from sausage, chicken wrapped in bacon, chicken legs, top and bottom sirloin, a house specialty, garlic top sirloin, filet mignon (plain and wrapped in bacon of course), pork and beef ribs, and rib-eye. Our favorites are the chicken legs (marinated) and garlic beef.

They also have an excellent “salad” bar with high-quality foods like giant asparagus, cheeses, smoked salmon, artichokes, and other fancy items. And to top it off, they have a wonderful dessert menu. A few of us have tried other D.C. area churrascaria’s (Brazilian BBQs), and we all agree that by far Fogo is the best of the bunch. This includes Greenfields in Rockville, Texas Brazil in Fair Lakes, and Malibu Grill. The meat is very high quality, and the service is TOP notch. The cooks and waiters definitely earn their 20%.

So what’s the point of all this? Well, the price. For lunch, it costs about $30 per person, plus tax and tip. Here in D.C., expect it to run $40 when all is done (10% sales tax and 20% tip). Desserts are about $7.50, and coffees (with alcohol) are almost $9. Evenings and weekends are about $50 per person, and they don’t offer a la carte ordering at any time.

So for our team lunch, 11 people dined. That’s $30 plus an average $8 for dessert. I had a coffee with Bailey’s and Frangelico (hazelnut), which was quite strong, but good. Others had Irish coffees or chocolate mousse cakes (very, very good).

So, $38 plus 30% (tax and tip) is just about $50 per person for this lunch. That’s a $550 check for all $11 of us. Wow. But it was worth it. The team is all liquored up and ready to take a nap and…wait, I guess that’s counterproductive, isn’t it?

Ok, time to lay down in the hallway. Hope the client doesn’t mind…