Copperwood: Alexa, what would your dream food scene look like in Jamaica? How do you see Jamaican food being elevated to the next level?

Alexa: Personally, I wish our food scene was a little more like Tulum, Mexico — fresh seafood everywhere and on a sand strip, tourists venturing outside of the all-inclusive hotels, riding bicycles, taking taxis, exploring real Jamaican cuisine! Unfortunately instead, we're killing our coral reefs and our beautiful parrot fish. And the pollution — how we dispose of our waste, because garbage trucks just can't get to some people's homes — is also a deterrent, so a lot of tourists just don't feel safe here, so that dream of mine is pretty far off.

But, chefs are coming into their own and diners are peeking into that unfamiliar realm of becoming 'foodies' and adventurous eating. The hurdles we as cooks or chefs have is the costs of food here, which goes back to my dream. But other means of getting creative with affordable produce here is where I hope we take it and ultimately elevate that norm into something spectacular. My prediction is our saltfish could be the next prosciutto!

Copperwood: Kayter is your new pop up space, tell us more about what happens here and how it started. What are some of your favourite pork dishes that have been on the menu?

Alexa: Kayter is a pop-up kitchen destination in Kingston. We've done a lot of different pop-up menus for occasions, one of them for Valentine's day, another time the amazing Simo's Bread and Catering used our space for her own pop-up.​ At the moment, we hire students to work at our 'cookshop' to help with their hours. It started honestly, from a lull period in my catering and hearing my other caterer friends with the same dilemma. I just said, why not have a space to host pop-ups at? I wanted it to be a community for chefs to be comfortable and use it as therapy or just a place to try make some money with a short lease or for a day.

Some favourite pork dishes I’ve made? Orange Braised Cheeks w/ Five Spiced Crispy Ears...Also one of my favourites is Deep Fried Spam Musubi (heck, even fried Spam alone will do it for me!). You can check out the recipe I did for Spam Musubi here. But my customers' favorite would definitely have to be my Kalua Pork Belly.

Copperwood: We see you have a Jamaican chef squad that comes to Kayter a lot, tell us more about the cooking community in Jamaica.

Alexa: We call ourselves the Watering Hole Crew! I don't even wanna brag but we've had to turn down a couple people! Just kidding :p. It's a potluck where everyone brings a dish. We choose an ingredient and we each cook our own interpretation of that ingredient making it the star of the dish. It’s amazing to see what we come up with and to see how diverse we are as chefs. We’re a close community, helping each other, and not as competitive as people think. We’re here to learn from each other.

Copperwood: What’s your favourite yaad-to-abroad pork recipe?

Alexa: Gosh that is such a hard one! My favorite changes like every week, but I am a diehard ‘Fried Chicken with Curry Gravy’ girl. So my interpretation is Chicken Fried Seasoned Pork Belly — where I take off the pork skin and dehydrate it, turning it into cracklin’. Then I batter and fry the pork belly (because obviously it wasn't fatty enough to begin with :p...I know I'm Jamaica's Paula Deen). Then I the put the pork belly on top of this amazing Curried Risotto made by straining the gravy off of my Curried Goat and sautéeing the arborio rice in the pork belly fat! I finish the risotto w/ reduced coconut milk, scotch bonnet, scallion, black pepper and a little flaked salt. Let me tell you, this dish is a dream!