i had the ultimate disappointing evening at fogo last night in mn and was so disappointed i felt you deserve to have this shared - i've visited fogo in chicago, las vegas, dallas and here in minneapolis many times with clients and have taken team members and my wife to the various restaurants. i believe last night was the last a two+ hour snore fest that was nothing short of disappointing.
i was at fogo with my three teenage kids and wife. we'd decided it would be a fun evening for the kids to experience the gauchos running around and serving wonderful meats. unfortunately our evening ended in tears, fights and anything but good memories. the issues ranged from meat quality well below what i would expect to service that would be considered bad at an applebees.
started off on an uneven foot: after being seated i was handed the wine menu and told the waiter i wanted to look it over to make a selection. however, after waiting 10- min for him to return i just had us go to the salad bar. after completely finishing this portion of the meal i was still holding the wine menu and signaled multiple times to order wine, only to be finally availed much later. we were given new plates promptly which was the one expeditious thing about the meal. having done that it took several minutes when the cards were green for the first guacho to show up. ok, fair enough three or four gauchos swarmed for a few minutes and we were off. except the meat quality was really subpar (constant event throughout the night, not sure if you guys are cutting food costs or what, but the meet was stiff, stringy and just not grade a). one of the gaucho's slipped and brushed a large stain across my shirt - with an 'oops' as the only comment of apology. with the first few pieces consumed we flipped cards back to green, except this time no gauchos actually stopped. many ran past us, but none stopped. eventually the filet mignon showed up so we grabbed that, but of course were hoping for more. my daughter in particular specifically wanted to get chicken. so i grabbed one of the waiters, a gaucho and eventually two more waiters and asked if they could send that and the ribeye. each seemed to suggest that they would, but there we sat. all the while my daughter, myself and one of my sons has the cards green but for 15 minutes no gauchos stopped. at this point my youngest son decided he'd just be done and he and my wife started to get seriously bored. eventually the first waiter showed up and asked if we needed anything to which i told him "nobody has been by since we last spoke". some 5+ minutes later the gauchos were finally directed our way and we were finally able to grab some additional food. by which point three of our five plates had been removed because several family members had just given up, so of course we eat quickly and hoped to at least call it a night. our plates were removed and then we sat. after 15-20 more minutes of waiting for the check i was nearly about to just walk out and try to pay at the reception desk but my wife got up and tracked down assistant manager jay miller and let him know we'd been waiting so long. he brought us the check and offered his apologies and brought us two cheesecakes and a couple chocolate mouse to try to make it right (i guess five us were intended to spit the 4 of them).. in any event by this point it was just too little too late and we finally left the restaurant almost 2 1/2hrs after we'd entered, one of our sons actually crying because he was so frustrated.
at this point, having sat so long from when kids stopped eating to actually leaving the ride home was punctuated with fights - which aren't entirely your doing i get, but as you can imagine the only memory my kids will have of your restaurant are anything but positive.
for what it's worth - at the very least you should retrain your gauchos on their 'search pattern'. our seats on the middle of the south wall may just have not been where their eyes searched. i don't know. it was just not a great night.
disappointed,