The main dining room at Fazenda
What can you tell us about Fazenda?
As we're seeing with a few new restaurants in London like Six by Nico and Mowgli, Fazenda first made its name outside of London in cities that include Leeds and Liverpool, before deciding to open in the capital. It's primarily a rodizio grill restaurant. If you haven't come across one of those before, it's where you'll be served a series of meats, usually from skewers until you ask them to stop. With the London Fazenda, they're also aiming for a little more beyond the usual rodizio experience.
Where is it?
They've set up their restaurant in the heart of the City, just off Bishopsgate, with the closest station being Liverpool Street.
Where should we go for a drink first?
While this area might not be blessed with the best places to drink in the city - there are still a few decent options in the immediate area. The best of the bunch is probably Ginger Lily, the cocktail bar at the nearby Pan Pacific London. Alternatively, there's The Alchemist Bevis Marks or Paradise Green by the Daisy Green group. All of those would be decent options, but it's worth noting that Fazenda also has a sizeable downstairs bar. It had yet to build a scene on our early visit, but it's a huge space that could prove very handy in this part of town.
A couple of cocktails in the bar downstairs, including their take on the caipirinha up front, the Tupian Villager (Yaguara organic cachaça, Avallen calvados, fair kumquat, Mediterranean herbs, sumac, £14)
Where should we sit?
Head up a couple of floors and you'll find the main restaurant. For something that's been created bespoke for the area, it all looks rather impressive and like it's been here a while. It's certainly aiming for that steakhouse vibe - lots of dark wood and brass, and there are plenty of tables that can be used for groups. So if you're in the City and fancy getting a large group out, this should definitely be worthy of consideration.
As for the best seats? We'd say head for the ones by the window, overlooking the bar. They're only for couples, but you'll have the most space around you there. Alternatively, you could hire out this impressive-looking semi-private dining room, surrounded by wine and spirits.
The semi-private dining room.
What's on the menu?
We'll get to the rodizio part in a bit, but it's worth mentioning that Fazenda have decided to play things a little differently in London. So there's a much larger focus on the non-rodizio dishes than you'll see at their other locations. The addition of separate snacks, small plates and mains menus, as an alternative to the rodizio experience, are completely new for this location, all led by their Executive Chef, Francisco Martinez.
While we think they might struggle to tempt people away from the rodizio as the main event, it's well worth starting with something from the newer sections of the menu before you kick off the meat-fest. What could have been just an add-on, manages to showcase some truly excellent dishes. In many ways, it's these new additions to the menu that really bring out the South American flavour of the restaurant.
Here's a taster of that:
If you just want something light - head for the snacks menu, where you'll find bits and pieces like these little wagyu beef eclairs with chimichurri mayo (£4.50).
Cornish Baeri caviar, churros, crème fraiche (£58) - very much at the high end of things (well, it IS the City), comes this unique take on the caviar starter. Those churros were notably great, too.
Carabinero prawn tartare, feta cheese, roe mullet, empanada dough (£20). We'd call this a must-have before you head into the rodizio part of the meal - a really excellent prawn tartare.
Another highly recommended dish - Locro Argentino - corn, chicken, pancetta, butter beans, ají picante (£11)
And then the rodizio?
There are some non-meat mains on offer, but let's be honest - you'll really be here for the rodizio. The whole thing comes in at £49.90, which is really not too bad at all for the area and the quality of the meats on offer here. There are two parts to the rodizio - the meats and the buffet.
Let's take the buffet first. This is essentially a selection of salads, cheese and cured meats that can either be an accompaniment to the main event or something you can have before it all kicks off. Many people are just going to have something from this instead of a starter - which makes us feel that they're slightly missing out. That's not to say that the buffet isn't very good. From our own short encounter with it, there are some impressive salads on there (an aubergine one was a great accompaniment).
The impressive buffet table
There's just a little bit of mixed messaging here. The restaurant wants to expand the menu and showcase the new starters and sides but still has to keep this, admittedly impressive, buffet as part of the main deal. It's slightly a catch-22 situation. They should probably just focus on the new starters and sides and ditch the buffet, but people familiar with the concept will not be pleased with that. We'll have to see how this evens out.
Next up there's the rodizio grill. This takes the form of six cuts of beef and two each of lamb, pork and chicken. They include filé mignon (probably our favourite of the night), sirloin, rump, wagyu sausage, lamb cutlets, pork belly and excellent truffled pork tenderloin. There are even chicken hearts - but we'd be interested to see just how many people take them up on those. Most of the meats are cut at your table and you use little tweezers to grab the slices as they drop off.
A selection of the meats (the wagyu sausages are on the right). We'll have to be honest that our photography "skills" somewhat fell apart in this section of the meal - but hopefully you get the idea.
It's been a while since we've been to a rodizio restaurant, but the meat did seem like a significant step up from our past experiences. Most of it was cooked incredibly well and really looked very impressive as it was delivered to the table.
As with other rodizios, there is the option to tell them to stop. You'll see a little metal hexagon that also acts as a rest for your main sharp steak knife (you can just see it in the picture above, on the left). Turn that over when you need some breathing space or the meat sweats are getting to you.
What's it like for vegetarians?
As you can imagine, it's a place that mainly caters for the meat-eaters among us. That said, there are lots of options on the starters and mains and the buffet is a good option too. But there's no vegetarian rodizio, we're afraid.
Is it even possible to leave room for dessert after all this?
Dessert is something you might struggle with if you've really gone all-in, but we'd still suggest holding back a little something. The two desserts we had were truly excellent and could easily be shared between two people.
First up is the dessert board made to look like a charcuterie platter. So that sausage you see below is chocolate and there's cream inside the white chocolate "cheese". This also comes with a non-alcoholic vermouth (make it alcoholic for an extra £8) which has a lime chunk that's also made out of chocolate. It was so life-like that we didn't even realise it wasn't a real lime until we were told to try it. All a must for the Is It Cake? fans out there.
The Picada Dulce (£10.90) - just extremely impressive
The Flan (£9) - For obvious reasons, this one slightly threw us. Not so much a flan, but laters of honeycomb, custard, dulce de leche and more. Easily enough to share, this is extremely indulgent in a great way.
What about drinks?
The wine list is, as you'd expect, primarily South American, with the strongest focus on Malbec from Argentina. Entry prices are notably affordable, at £33 for a bottle of white and £34 for red/rosé. Things do jump up a little from there, but you should be able to find something interesting under the £50 mark. As it's the City, there are a few options in the £100s, and if you really want to show off, get a jeroboam of Los Chacayes malbec for £1073.
Overall thoughts
This is a very different kind of steakhouse for the City. At the moment, we'd say it's pitched a little lower in the marketplace than Hawksmoor or Goodman, with that £49 deal on rodizio driving a lot of the custom. But the room looks impressive, the rodizio meats are better than anything we've ever had rodizio-wise and there are some truly impressive starters and desserts here. Already packed on a Friday night (not the easiest night in the City), we can see this one being popular.
More about Fazenda
Where is it? 100 Bishopsgate, City of London, London EC2M 1GT
How to book: Book online or call 0203 370 7202.
Find out more: Visit their website or follow them on Instagram @fazenda.group.
Hot Dinners ate as guests of Fazenda. Prices are correct at the time of writing.
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