From 5 star hotels to the streets of Cyprus, one chef is at pains to educate the eating masses on how much goes into cooking a good steak dinner

I was the owner of one of the nicest restaurants in one of the nicest streets of Cyprus, and the following week, I was cooking on the street, recalls Jeffrey, a private chef originally from Guatemala who climbed the ladder in the Cypriot culinary world but has now turned to what he does best: grilling meat on an open flame.

In the early 2000s, Jeffrey Hoffen opened the first Brazilian restaurant in Nicosia. Located on one of the most affluent streets (Strasicratous) of the capital, Fogo & Brasa Churrascaria Brasil was a successful venture created in partnership with Apoel football player Gustavo Manduca, and it thrived for a good five years.

“We realised there weren’t many Brazilian restaurants… and we served Rodizio,” explains Jeffrey, referring to the Brazilian all-you-can-eat service that brings a continuous, rotating selection of fire-roasted meats directly to the table, carved on demand. Yet, “before the renovations began on Stasicratous Street, and before Covid, we decided to sell it,” he adds.

The private chef then realised that his customers were seeking him out. “They needed someone to cook steak for them in their houses, and so I started to cater small events, based mainly on steak.” This came hand-in-hand with Jeffrey also organising outdoor cooking events on the streets of the capital, cooking meat on an open flame and providing experiential encounter.

“I enjoy this even more than working in a restaurant. I like to share what I do and make an impression of what good quality meat is,” he says. Working outside is “a bit more organic,” he adds. “Sure, you don’t have the luxury of having a restaurant but in the end, I realised that having an expensive restaurant or something that has a lot of running expenses automatically makes the prices go up (for the customer), plus I have more free time for my family, my kids and all that.”

Having worked in five-star hotels across the island, including the Four Seasons and the Hilton, Jefferey also undertook kitchen design for hotels for some years but has left that behind too for a better quality of life and a more exciting approach for his customers.

“I want to reach as many steak lovers as I can without being too expensive and with good quality of meat… do something that’s easy to do with customers. The formula of having something which is movable with which you go to a client’s house or a hotel and reach out to people is something that works”.

His latest venture has seen the open flame grilling idea reach new heights, at the newly-renovated Jubilee Hotel in Troodos, where he serves steaks and burgers with his Fogo Signature. “After Covid, many things changed in the way people eat and how they gather together. Jubilee is a very nice place and since it’s wintertime, it’s a nice experience for people to enjoy the hotel and the snow… eating is not just about eating, it’s a time you share with your family, with your friends. This is the main reason people gather around a barbecue; and so, at the Jubilee, we combine this experience with good quality meat and a bit of an educational talk about it as well.”

The event serves the expected quality steaks accompanied with sauté potatoes with herbs and a variety of grilled vegetables as well as burgers, in this instance made from Black Angus served in a home-made brioche. The signature is derived from a couple of elements. “First of all, whatever you do in cooking, if you have a good ingredient, it doesn’t matter if it’s beef, seafood or vegetables; if you do it properly and the ingredients are good, the end result will be good as well.

And then, what gives the specific flavour to my steaks is that I cook with wood. I cook with either olive or lemon tree wood, which is sourced from a company that has the permission to sell this kind of wood. Fire is one of the oldest methods of cooking, and it’s used in the Mediterranean a lot, it’s in the culture. I don’t use any sauces, except chimichurri, which is Argentinian. I like to use only salt which enhances the flavour of every kind of cut; every beef cut has its own taste. I try to teach people how to differentiate meat. There are some cuts that have a lot of fat, and that fat makes it tastier. On the other hand, we have filet steak, which is more lean, so perhaps you won’t feel that there’s so much taste there.”

Beef, Jeffrey says, has become something of a luxury, gaining in popularity in Cyprus in the last four to five years. His experience on the island over the last 20 years, has left him with the impression that “Cypriots didn’t have too much knowledge about different kinds of cuts of beef when I came to the island, plus, at the time, there wasn’t very good quality of meat available. Nobody knew what picanha was when I opened the restaurant, people only knew ribeye or tenderloin. For many years people in Cyprus were eating well done steaks, in which you can’t exactly taste the meat, you can’t feel the essence so much; the flavour comes from the content of fat, if it’s grain fed, if it’s grass fed, the quality of meat, the temperature you start cooking it at, the temperature of the grill, how long you cook it for, there are so many factors that someone needs to consider in order to make a nice steak.”

This is the educational aspect of Jeffrey’s work. “We started teaching people that, yes, there’s other kinds of cuts of beef, which are really nice as well. Unfortunately, the weather in Cyprus doesn’t allow the beef to develop properly to have the taste that imported meat has. And even though beef has become expensive, there’s still a lot of cuts which have regular prices, mainly from Australia, USA, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay.”

As the subject of the mistakes we make in the kitchen at home comes up, Jeffrey turns to cooking methods. “Your cooking method should be appropriate to the kind of meat you’re using. For example, there are some kinds of beef which need to be cooked in a casserole to make a nice stew let’s say, the tough meat. It’s very lean, there’s no fat on it. You need to use the kind of meat you’re buying properly. We have a responsibility as a chef or butcher to educate our customers.

“If someone says to their local butcher, I want to have some steaks. Generally, you need to know, what kind of steaks? What’s your budget? How you will cook it? In the pan, on the grill? Is it gas grill, charcoal? And it’s not that the most expensive is nicest. It’s not like that. It’s the cooking method. The knowledge. When meat smells of grass, for example, there’s a reason. It’s because it’s grass fed. Grain fed has another taste. Grain fed is more fatty because the animal has been raised in order to produce more mass and more fat content, so the final content of the meat gives more flavour. Cuts like black Angus or wagyu have been raised more strictly and that’s why they’re more expensive, they’re designed to develop certain characteristics that make it more tasty.”

And then there’s the experience of course. “If you look at how modern restaurant kitchens are, you’ll see open kitchens because people want to see how it’s done, how clean it is, how the food is handled,” says Jeffrey. This comes hand-in-hand with the personality of the chef, how he or she can deliver what he does to the customer, and make it a memorable experience. “Chefs worldwide focus on the experience and the presentation. If you manage to make an impression on someone, they’ll never forget that experience.”

Jeffrey initially came to Cyprus 20 years ago to become a chef, studying culinary arts at the Higher Hotel Institute. It is also in Cyprus that he met his wife and started a family. “I started from zero. I actually finished chemical engineering in Guatemala and wanted to do food technology after my degree in culinary arts, but I like food so much that I became a chef,” he says. “People ask me if I’m a catering company and I’m not a catering company, I’m a private chef”.

For the moment, he’s focused on the experience he’s trying to provide at the Jubilee Hotel. “It’s not easy to set up a kitchen at three degrees on the snow and deliver good steaks,” he laughs. “What we want to do with the Jubilee Hotel is to combine hospitality and a nice hotel, with an experience of good food, bringing new people to the area.” As for the future, aside from the outdoor cooking events in Nicosia, the Jubilee seems to be becoming a second home for Jeffrey. “We will be announcing more dates for winter events at Jubilee. But when summer comes around and Nicosia gets very hot, we’re planning to continue to do BBQs in the mountains as well.” It seems like Jeffrey will continue adapting his menu according to the places and seasons he works in.

Fogo BBQ

Open-flame grilling, steaks and burgers by chef Jeffrey Hoffens. February 7-8. March 7-8. Jubilee Hotel, Troodos. 12pm-4pm. Reservations needed. Tel: 25-420107