Local Spotlight: Chef Christina and the Legacy of Love in Caribbean Cooking
Chef Christina’s love language is food, and she shows that through her food and advocacy work in the Bay Area.
It started with a dinner party of strangers in Spain.
Christina Alexis was getting her MBA in marketing, commerce, and distribution overseas and missed the soul food flavors from back home. So she “reverse-engineered” the recipe for her favorite jerk chicken from Nathan’s Chicago Style in her childhood neighborhood, Hyde Park. She was so impressed with how it turned out, that she decided to host a dinner party through the Meetup platform. The dinner guests loved the food and asked to come back the following week. “It became this weekly supper club.”
Christina’s foray into cooking for others was inspired by her late maternal grandmother Doris, who she describes as a nurturer who held space, time, and comfort for everyone and brought people together with food. “I thought it was like a superpower. I always thought, ‘I want to be like that when I grow up.’”
Christina didn’t charge for the dinner parties at first but eventually began asking for 20 euros a plate. She then branched into catering, and by the time she moved back to the United States in 2016, cooking was all she wanted to do. “Feeding people is my love language.”
She moved to the Bay Area to be closer to her twin sibling, who had lived there for the past decade. There, she sought work in high-level marketing and social media management roles but dreaded the idea of it.
“I tried to imagine myself using my creativity to promote the value of someone else’s business, but I thought, why can’t I be doing that for myself?”
To keep her culinary skills sharp, Christina started bartending, working at farmer’s markets, and offering her services as a private chef on demand. She filed for an LLC that same year and steadily built up a client list.
In January 2019, she finally took the leap and quit her four other jobs to fully launch The Pleasure Principle Dining Events.
“Food is the coolest business to market because it’s so experiential. You get to taste something someone was taught for generations, like a legacy. That’s so much more impactful than a marketing campaign.”
A little more than a year after The Pleasure Principle became a full-fledged business, COVID-19 caused all events to be canceled, meaning there was no need for catering. “The pandemic really taught food businesses what we’re made of.”
Despite not having any events booked, Christina was still cooking. She had a craving for the Jamaican patties she had in Astoria on one of her family’s frequent trips from Chicago to New York. Once she perfected the recipe, an opportunity to feed others came about. A friend offered to pay her to cook some meals for a local unemployed single mother. Christina agreed to help for free. When she delivered the food, the woman asked, “Is there a way to make this regular?”
Christina was determined to figure that out.
She started collecting donations, $5 to cover one meal, $10 for two. With this small mutual aid program, she delivered 300 meals over 3–4 months.
When she joined the World Central Kitchen program in July 2020, Christina was able to expand and give out a total of 11,000 meals over time.
“I never thought my little company would be able to put out so much food.”
As an Oakland resident, giving back is just a natural part of being in the community for Christina. “Oakland has taught me so much about having a spirit of mutual aid built into your business and yourself.”
In addition to the mutual aid fund, The Pleasure Principle is a participating restaurant in Dining for Justice, which involves adding a surcharge on all orders to help feed the unhoused people in Oakland. “It’s an easy, passive, and smart way to give back. I didn’t even think twice about it.”
Early on in the pandemic, Christina had been feeling immobilized when it came to social activism. “I was always asking ‘Where do I start? What can I do?’ before I realized I should look at what we can do and what other people are doing.”
You can donate to the mutual aid fund via The Pleasure Principle PayPal and try Chef Christina’s beef patties or vegan patties through delivery on Airmart.
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