This article reflects one personal dining and reservation experience. Restaurant policies, availability, staffing, and event schedules can change over time.
Quick take
Reservation experience: 1/5. A milestone dinner became difficult to plan and ultimately impossible to enjoy as promised because of repeated, last-minute changes to seating and departure times.
Communication: 1/5. The sequence of calls did not provide a clear, reliable plan, even after a revised reservation window was agreed.
Overall: Based on this experience, I would not rely on Fogo de Chão for a time-sensitive family celebration without written confirmation of the exact seating and dining window.
We booked a 6:00 PM table for November 26 to celebrate two important family milestones: my mother’s 75th birthday and my son’s birthday. We were excited to try Fogo de Chão and expected a relaxed, celebratory dinner. Instead, the reservation became a chain of changing instructions that left us unsure whether we could be accommodated at all.
A reservation that kept changing
The trouble began the day before our booking. We were told that the only dinner times remaining were 2:00, 4:00, and 8:00 PM, and were encouraged to arrive around 7:15 PM in case earlier parties left. That was already difficult to reconcile with the original 6:00 PM reservation.
At 4:00 PM on the day of the dinner, Rose called and said we would not be seated until approximately 8:30 to 9:00 PM. When I asked about closing time, I was told the restaurant closed at 10:00 PM. For a birthday meal, that would have left very little room for an unhurried experience.
I then asked to speak with Ems, the general manager. Ems offered a revised dining window from 5:30 to 7:30 PM, and we agreed to it. We left Bicutan at 4:15 PM, but heavy traffic delayed us. When we called to say that we would be about 30 minutes l…
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