07/10/2026
🍽️ FOGO DE CHÃO 🥩 AND NAN XIANG SOUP DUMPLINGS 🥟 ARE COMING TO THE MALL IN COLUMBIA —they taking over the exterior-facing spaces that Walrus Oyster & Ale House, Chicken + Whiskey, and Bennie’s Pizza left dark more than a year ago.
If you know, you know - Fogo is a Brazilian Gaucho steakhouse chain. Chefs walk the floor with skewers of picanha, sirloin, filet, beef rib and more and you flip a little card — green for KEEP IT COMING I WILL EAT IT ALL, red for PLEASE HAVE MERCY, I GIVE UP. There’s a gigantic salad bar and charcuterie. It’s prix-fixed all you can eat! I have a soft spot here. I normally dislike chains but ever since first went to a Fogo as a teenager in Atlanta 30 years ago, I have been hooked. My motto as a teen - green must stay up. My motto now - green only up for the premium cuts. My family last took me to the Baltimore location for my birthday a couple years back. I still have the meat sweats. I still regret nothing.
Nan Xiang Soup Dumplings is also a chain but a chain that has been Michelin-recommended NINE YEARS RUNNING for their xiao long bao. Soup dumplings in pork, crab, chicken, truffle, scallop, abalone varieties — or order a “Lucky Six” basket with one of each. Pan-fried pork buns, siu mai, shrimp potstickers, hand-pulled noodles. It’s legit!
So how did this news break?! That’s the strange part. This news was the LAST THROWAWAY SENTENCE of today’s Baltimore Banner story today about something else entirely.
Lillian Reed’s piece (link in comments) is about Desmond Reilly, who closed all three of his Columbia mall restaurants last year (Walrus, Chicken+Whiskey, Bennie’s) and he blamed crime at the Mall for their closure. I wrote at the time that I didn’t buy it. Turns out I was right. There plenty of other Downtown Columbia restaurants that are doing just fine, but increased competition means you gotta be good to survive. Sorry, but Walrus and Chicken+Whiskey were not good, but pour one out for Bennie’s.
Court records now show Reilly stopped paying its $18,200 monthly rent in SEPTEMBER 2023. EIGHTEEN MONTHS before The Mall evicted him and they are now suing for $5.6M. Oops!
📌 A note on sourcing, because I checked: Nan Xiang is CONFIRMED — it’s on their own website, Unit 3035, coming soon. Fogo is NOT CONFIRMED. No permit. No liquor license application. Nothing on Fogo’s site, nothing in their press releases. No hits on Google. The Banner is the only source that exists. Lillian’s good and I believe her. But that’s where we are.
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