Getting the Most Out of Fogo De Chao Troy
I've been going to the Fogo De Chao in Troy, Michigan for about four years now. It's one of those all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouses where the gauchos come around with skewers of different meats. The Troy location is a decent enough stand-in if you can't make it downtown to the Detroit spot, but there are a few things that aren't obvious if you just walk in and start saying yes to every skewer. The card system matters more than most people realize. When you sit down, they give you two cards — green means yes, red means stop. The rule is you flip the red side up on the table when you're done. Simple enough. What nobody tells you is that the servers actually check your card before bringing out the good stuff. If your card is green, they'll keep coming. If it's red, they give you a fifteen to twenty minute window and then mostly leave you alone. I learned this after a Thanksgiving dinner where my whole party kept flipping back and forth, and we ended up waiting forty minutes between each meat run because nobody was committed to anything.
The Ultimate Fogo De Cho Troy Experience A Cut Above The Ordinary
Here's the practical part. Go on a weekday lunch if you can. The Troy location does a lunch buffet that runs roughly $30 to $35 per person compared to $50-plus for dinner. The meat selection at lunch is slightly reduced — you still get the signature cuts, but some of the rotation items like the lamb or certain specialty ribs tend to only show up at dinner. The salad bar is identical between lunch and dinner though, and that's where a lot of people mess themselves up. I'd recommend filling up on the salad bar first, but not in the traditional sense. The trick is to treat the salad bar as an appetizer course, not a replacement for the meat. Load up on the picanha-ready items — the farofa, the pineapple chunks, the black beans. Those are actually designed to cut through the fat of the meats. I've watched people go straight for the sushi and the fried items and then wonder why they're too full for the picanha, which is honestly the best cut they bring out. One thing that trips people up: the picanha doesn't come out until about twenty minutes in. If you're starving when you sit down, don't start saying yes immediately. Let the first round of file mignon and linguiça sausage come around, eat a moderate amount of those, and then let the picanha hit your table when it's ready. I once went hard on the first pass and barely had room for the picanha on the second. It's the cut they're most proud of and the one that shows off what this place is actually about.
The wine situation at the Troy location is hit or miss. They pour house wine by the glass, but the selection rotates based on whatever the corporate inventory landed recently. Last March I got stuck with a Portuguese red that was barely drinkable. Bring your own wine if the location allows it — they charge a corkage fee, usually around ten dollars, but that's still cheaper than being stuck with a bad glass for three hours. Check their current policy before you go since it changes occasionally. Another counter-intuitive thing: don't feel obligated to try every single meat in one sitting. The gauchos cycle through about eight to ten different cuts over a two-hour period. By the time you get to the heart and the chorizo near the end, your palate is shot and you're not actually tasting anything. It's better to pick three or four favorites and pace yourself. The molhadinho — that's the garlic butter they pour over everything — is everywhere and it's genuinely good, but it also masks a lot of mediocre meat. If a cut tastes fine with the garlic butter but boring without it, that's not a good sign. Parking at the Troy location is tolerable but can be a pain during peak hours. The lot shares a strip mall with a Chipotle and a few other places, and on Friday and Saturday nights it fills up fast. I usually aim for a 5:30 or 6:00 PM reservation on weekdays and there's zero stress. Weekends are different — you'll wait twenty to thirty minutes for a table even with a reservation sometimes. No reservations on weekends there apparently, or at least they don't honor them well. Walk-ins on a Saturday at 7:00 PM is a rough play.
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If you're looking for a similar experience but want better value, the Fogo De Chao in Somerset Collection inside the Troy area is fine but honestly the Detroit location near the river has a better reputation among regulars. That said, the Troy spot gets the job done and the staff tends to be more attentive than at some of the busier locations because the volume is lower. I've had worse experiences at the Orlando airport version of this place, so expectations should be calibrated accordingly. The bottom line is that this isn't a place where you need special tactics, but knowing how the system works saves you from leaving full and regretful. Go hungry, use the cards strategically, prioritize the picanha, and skip the fried food at the salad bar. That's really all there is to it.
