Have you ever thought to yourself, "I could really go for 15 different cuts of meat carried around on swords served to me by guys dressed like gauchos?" Then Fogo de Chão is for you. Yes, it's pricey ($24.50 for lunch, $44.50 for dinner). But this price gets you all you can eat of the aforementioned 15 cuts of meat, several of which are wrapped in bacon. Plus, you get the same food at lunch as you do at dinner. You also get access to the salad bar. And this is no run-of-the-mill, pansy-ass salad bar. While the salad bar does contain assorted salads and other vegetable-type items like heart of palm, it also has many, many non-vegetarian items, such as fresh mozzarella, salmon, and more. It is easily the most badass salad bar I have ever seen.

Not very badass? Well, c'mon. It's just a salad bar.

The phrase "All you can eat" immediately conjures images of a buffet, and this usually means getting a plate, walking over to the buffet line, and waiting to serve yourself food that's been sitting in vats all day. Not so at Fogo de Chão. After you've been seated, a gaucho comes over and gives you the run-down on how the restaurant works. First, you go get your vegetable-type items at the salad bar (so you can get this out of the way in preparation for the real food). Then comes the meat. As the gaucho will tell you, you will find a 2-sided circular card at each seat. One side is red, the other, green. When you flip it to green, the roving gaucho waiters come and offer you swords of meat. If you desire to eat what they're carrying, they set down their sword and hack a piece off for you with a giant knife, or, in the case of non-slicing items, slide it off the sword with an equally giant fork. Awesome.

Oh, and red means "stop serving me," but if you have any business being at this restaurant, you won't be needing this side.

In terms of meat, your options include: top sirloin, bottom sirloin, garlic beef, filet mignon, filet mignon wrapped in bacon (awesome), beef ribs, pork ribs, pork sausage, chicken drumsticks, chicken breasts wrapped in bacon (awesome), leg of lamb, and lamb chops. Please do not assume that the cuts not marked with awesome are not, in fact, awesome. Those two happen to be wrapped in bacon, which is so awesome that it doesn't even count as meat anymore.

I mentioned earlier that there are 15 cuts of meat. They only show 12 on their website (listed above), but they say 15 too, but I can't remember what the other three are.

12 cuts of awesome

If for some reason you didn't completely stuff yourself with meat (I only put away a little over 2lbs.), they also have dessert. Depending on who you ask, the dessert is very good. I ordered the cheesecake and what they brought was about (literally) 4 inches high with a much larger base than regular, pansy-ass cheesecake. It was also awesome, but I shamefully admit that I couldn't finish it. My roommate ordered the key lime pie, which he equated to the pie served at our dining hall (Ed. note: not good).

All in all, Fogo de Chão rules and was worth the $44.50 base price, which means it's well worth the $24.50 bargain price at lunch. I highly reccomend that you head to your nearest location if you are so lucky as to live in the vicinity of this fine establishment, but there's only 4 locations in the U.S. right now (Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta) with a fifth coming soon (Beverly Hills). If you don't live in or near one of these cities, write to your congressman, local chamber of commerce, mayor, or whoever you think may be able to get Fogo de Chão to come to your town.

I am now proud to introduce the LemonEye, Inc. restaurant rating scale, in which all restaurants aspire to achieve the greatness of Fogo de Chão.