Gaucho’s Prime joins the Brazilian steak house scene in King of Prussia

The Philadelphia area has plenty of steak houses. But churrascarias, the Brazilian all-you-can-eat extravaganzas boasting a buffet and sword-wielding waiters roving the dining room bearing rodizio-style grilled meats on skewers?

Far fewer.

And now a second one has opened in King of Prussia — barely three minutes from a location of Fogo de Chão, the biggest player in the Brazilian steak house game in the United States.

What were restaurateurs Anderson Winck and Ana Lima thinking?

“It’s the best location in the area,” said Winck the other day, in the dining room of Gaucho’s Prime, which sprawls over 10,000 square feet in the former Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse at North Gulph Road and Mall Boulevard.

Gaucho’s Prime is the third restaurant opening in three years for Winck and Lima, former Fogo employees who said they left the company because they saw opportunities, and because they thought that Fogo had gotten too corporate, including adding extra cuts of beef to increase the tabs.

“Nothing against them,” Winck said. “They have a huge public and do huge numbers, but we’re not afraid to compete.”

In addition to the 18 meats that come off the charcoal rotisserie (such as picanha, alcatra, and fraldinha), Winck and Lima offer grilled chicken and hot sides on their salad bar for those seeking a lighter, less beefy experience. The salad bar alone — roasted vegetables, Brazilian-style potato salad, tropeiro beans, hearts of palm, smoked salmon, cured meats, cheeses — is $32.95. Lunch, including the meats, is $44.95 weekdays and $51.95 weekends, while dinner, also served daily, is $64.95 daily, half price for ages 7 to 12.

There’s also a wine room right behind the host’s stand with 150 labels, and the bar is stocked with high-end spirits including cachaça, the spirit used in the signature caipirinhas.

Winck and Lima, as they later discovered, arrived in the United States on the same day: Aug. 1, 2006. Lima came to study math on a scholarship at Southeastern Illinois College in Harrisburg, Ill., and joined Fogo in Boston in 2014. Winck came to work at Fogo’s Dallas location and moved around for the company, even stopping in Center City Philadelphia, before settling in Boston.

After their shift one night in 2018, Winck and Lima sat to chat at an empty table. They saw how Fogo had grown from a Brazilian export to a chain of more than 60 U.S. locations. “We said, ‘We’re going to open a restaurant together and we’re going to make it happen,’” Winck said.

They sketched out their business plan on a tablecloth, selected a location 15 minutes away inside the Aloft Hotel in Boston’s Seaport District, and opened Alma Gaucha in March 2020. Business was brisk, as the restaurant is across from the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. “We served 7,000 people [attending a trade show] the first weekend,” Winck said.

Two weeks later, the COVID-19 shutdowns began.

Alma Gaucha’s customer base became the National Guard stationed at the convention center. Alma Gaucha hung on without government assistance. It’s now a $7-million-a-year restaurant, they said.

Winck and Lima helped to open a second restaurant in Brazil. With both of them putting down roots in Boston suburbs, they set their mind to growing their company.

After King of Prussia, more are on the way — another in Massachusetts, D.C., and North Jersey.

The biggest challenge is “behind the scenes,” Winck said. “We used to have a full corporate office that supported us with the IT, the marketing, the payroll, the HR — everything. Now it’s just us. But we’re figuring it out.”

The American pronunciation is typically GAU-cho, and that is fine, said Winck. How might a Portuguese-speaker from southern Brazil say it?

It’s more like gah-OOO-chus.