Fogo de Chão with Candice King & Kayla Ewell

"Fogo de Chão with Candice King & Kayla Ewell" is Episode 206 of *Doughboys*, hosted by Mike Mitchell and Nick Wiger. "Fogo de Chão with Candice King & Kayla Ewell" was released on June 6, 2019.

## Synopsis

The 'boys are joined by hosts of the podcast *Directionally Challenged*, Candice King and Kayla Ewell, to review their most recent trip to Brazilian steakhouse Fogo de Chão. Plus, a Coca-Cola edition of Drank or Stank.

## Nick's intro

"*My horse and my women went off to Salta. May the horse return, for I don't need my woman.*"

The source of this excerpt is a well-known copla, a type of Spanish-language poem or folk song celebrating the gaucho.

Something of a cross between the cowboy of the American West and the knight of medieval Europe, the gaucho's origins trace to the Spanish and Portuguese colonists who first invaded South America in the 15th century, subjugating and brutalizing the native population.

As conquistadors conquered the continent, they forever altered the culture, including food - in part via the introduction of European cattle. In the 16th through 19th centuries, as human labor became needed to manage the ever-growing herds that roamed across Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil, professional cattle wranglers became known as gauchos, revered for their able horsemanship and skill with a boleadora, a thrown weapon of rope-linked weights used to entangle the legs of escaping cows. The gauchos' life on the range led them to subsist on a diet heavy on readily-available beef and so they developed an open-flame roasting method known in Portuguese as churrascaria.

The gaucho as a profession receded in the 20th century, but the influence persisted, and in 1979, two pairs of brothers who grew up in rural southern Brazil came together to open a gaucho-inspired churrascaria of their own in the big city of São Paulo. The upscale all-you-can-eat steakhouse thrived and the brothers would open outlets across Brazil, and in 1997, the company ventured overseas, boldly staking a claim with a franchise in the U.S. beef capitol of Dallas, Texas.

Meat-addicted Americans loved the carnivorous gluttony afforded by the rodízio-style presentation where waiters walk you an array of barbecue beef until you cry "*Tio!*" and branches cropped up across the U.S. to become the best-known Brazilian chain restaurant in America.

Today, there are approximately 1.5 billion cattle worldwide and Brazil is now the largest exporter of beef in the world.

And while gauchos themselves may be about as common as cowboys and knights, today, their culture remains celebrated - in particular, their food.

This week on *Doughboys*: Fogo de Chão.

## Fork rating

Fogo de Chão is a churrascaria where they walk different meat to your table to sample whatever you want, and there is also a gigantic salad bar; so there isn't particularly any sort of specific order to list. I noted the items they mentioned, but certainly they had much more available to them.

## Drank or Stank

In Drank or Stank, The Doughboys have a drink and rate it either 'drank' or 'stank.'

For this episode, they try the Orange Vanilla Coke.

They all bemoaned the lack of Coke-ness in the drink, but liked the Orange Vanilla.

 Mike Mitchell
 Candice King
 Kayla Ewell

## Quotes

**Mitch**: Wiger Jr.!

**Mitch:** Mine was hard and small.

## Photos (via @doughboyspod)

Fogo Feijoada BarSalad BarSalad BarCharcuterie PlatePolenta and Caramelized BananasJumbo Shrimp CocktailPapaya CreamLinguiça and Frango