The Fogo Gaucho lunch pack was underwhelming
Fogo Gaucho lunch pack. PHOTO| MARYANNE OWITI
What you need to know:
- Fogo Gaucho offers a lunch pack for takeaway or delivery
- The lunch pack includes your choice of turkey, chicken, steak, and sausage, and two sides for a third of the dine-in price
Fogo Gaucho Vikings House, Westlands
For over a decade, Fogo Gaucho has been the premier Brazilian Steakhouse in Nairobi, offering seventeen cuts of delectable charcoal grilled meat (including ostrich and crocodile) for about Sh3,000 per person. There is also a buffet of twenty-five salads, sides, and desserts. The ambiance is meant to give you a feeling of a Churrascaria (steakhouse) in the heart of Brazil. Waiters bring skewers of various meat to your table and serve the cuts you want. It is little wonder that the service is much raved about. There are two locations – one in Westlands, off Waiyaki Way (Vikings House) and the other in Kilimani, on Galana Road (Galana Plaza). It’s perfect location for group events and celebrations like birthdays, and office parties.
For those for whom an endless supply of meat seems daunting or downright gluttonous, Fogo Gaucho offers a lunch pack for takeaway or delivery. The lunch pack includes your choice of turkey, chicken, steak, and sausage, and two sides for a third of the dine-in price. You can order the lunch pack online at their website, Jumia, or Glovo. A note of interest - the restaurant doesn’t open till noon so if you place your order through their website (which is available for 24/7 ordering), you’ll have to wait for an opening for the order to be processed. There is also a delivery of Sh50/km for orders under Sh2000. You don’t find this out until after you’ve processed the payment for your order. And then the wait is about 40 minutes.
For my lunch pack, I order turkey as the meat and pastels (Brazilian beef samosa) as a side. Chips come standard as the second side.
Fogo Gaucho pastel. PHOTO|MARYANNE OWITI
Turkey is a tricky meat to cook because dark meat and white meat have different cooking speeds so that by the time the legs and thighs are done, the breast is overcooked and dry. This is what happened with the turkey I ordered. The meat on the bone was moist while the breast meat was very dry. There is also no flavour other than a tinge gameyness on the side of the tongue. If you’re looking for that Brazilian steakhouse flavour, it’s not in the turkey. The pastels are rather pale and chewy (undercooked more like) and like the turkey only have a hint of flavour that reminiscent of a meat pie rather than a samosa. The chips taste like the ones you’d find in the CBD circa 1995.
As a way to gauge whether the Sh3,000 price tag is worth it, the lunch pack is a good idea. Too bad what I had was not of the high reviews the restaurant receives. Flavour wise, it wasn’t there. It would be better if they offered other lunch packs with their much raved about meats like the ribs and ostrich.
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