Alex Feeling Has Cooked Across The World

Jamaican dishes and ingredients from Mobay Cafe. Photo by Sophie Bolich.

Editor: This is the eighth installment of a series in which Urban Milwaukee explores five ingredients and how to use them with Milwaukee chefs, growers and caterers.

Arts, both culinary and otherwise, were an early interest for Alex Feeling, who was born and raised in Jamaica before following his career to kitchens in North Carolina, Guyana and across international waters as chef of a cruise ship.

Now a leader at Mobay Cafe, Feeling emphasizes authenticity — his ingredients, technique and overall approach are rooted nearly 2,000 miles south in his grandmother’s outdoor kitchen.

“She had a stove inside, electric and everything, but she still wanted to cook on the wood fire with heavy, cast-iron pots,” Feeling said. “I think I fell in love with cooking because of her. That’s where it started.”

Jamaican cuisine, especially in the Midwest, is often reduced to oxtails and jerk chicken. Though popular for a reason, these dishes only scratch the surface.

“Jamaican food is a mix of different cultures,” Feeling said. “We had the Arawak and the Taíno, who were indigenous people on the island before Christopher Columbus, and then we had all of the different ethnic groups that came into Jamaica: Irish, English, Chinese, Indian and African. So everyone made their contribution.”

The resulting combination of herbs, spices and cultural influence is what truly defines Jamaican cooking. A glance at Feeling’s mise en place proves it. Here’s a closer look at five of the chef’s most-used ingredients — and tips for using them at home.

Priminto

“You can’t have Jamaican food without priminto,” Feeling said, shaking a palmful of the bead-like brown berries. With notes of nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, garlic and clove, priminto serves as a warming base for jerk seasoning, often used as a fiery marinade or rub for meats.

“You guys might call it allspice,” he said, noting that the berries are also known as pimento, a result of Spanish settlers mistaking them for peppercorns. “But if you talk to a regular Jamaican, they’ll say it’s priminto — p-r-i-m-i-n-t-o.”

In addition to its role in the iconic jerk seasoning, priminto flavors drinks and baked goods and can even serve as a home remedy for snake and insect bites. “When I was growing up, my grandparents would add priminto and ginger to rum, then use it to cure snake bites, mosquito bites, stuff like that,” Feeling said. “They still have it in the house to this day.”

Thyme

Feeling reaches for thyme “nearly every single day,” using it to flavor menu favorites like jerk chicken, oxtail, curry goat stew and a variety of seafood dishes. And its form matters. The dried herb stands up to longer cooking times, while the fresh version should be added at the end for maximum flavor.

“They have a totally different taste,” Feeling said. “The dry one is more earthy, more robust, and the fresh one is a little bit more subtle — it’s light and fragrant.”

Oxtails

Ubiquitous on Jamaican menus worldwide, oxtail is exactly what it sounds like: fatty, cross-cut sections of cattle tails. The pieces range from palm-sized to about the width of a quarter and, when cooked low and slow, become very tender.

“It’s very savory, soft and meaty, and tends to fall off the bone,” said Feeling, who braises his oxtails in gravy with carrots, onions and potatoes. “It’s like beef, but very subtle.”

Oxtail prices have increased sharply in recent years, mirroring rising demand for a cut that was historically undervalued. Some credit its higher cost to social media attention, along with factors like limited supply, import costs and processing.

Ginger

Though typically tied to Asian cuisines, ginger’s sharp, pungent profile is an essential in Caribbean cooking. “It’s very spicy, very earthy,” Feeling said.

At Mobay Cafe, the tough-skinned roots are tossed into stewed meat dishes and sides such as rice and peas, mingling with coconut milk, priminto, thyme and “lots more ingredients [we] don’t want to give away,” Feeling said with a laugh.

The restaurant also sells ginger beer imported from Jamaica. “It’s almost like root beer,” Feeling said — no pun intended.

Coconut Milk

Versatile coconut milk is an everyday ingredient at Mobay Cafe, where it adds satisfying richness to vegan dishes such as curry jackfruit and enhances seafood options including Creole grilled salmon and Caribbean shrimp.

“Coconut has its own flavor profile, and it goes well with both spicy and sweet,” Feeling said.

The non-dairy milk, made from mature coconut fruit blended with water, is also a key component in sides like rice and peas and cassava-based flatbread.

Honorable Mention: Scotch Bonnet Pepper

The infamous Scotch Bonnet packs a serious punch — up to 10 times as spicy as a habanero, by Feeling’s estimate.

“When we’re using it in Jamaica, we don’t cut it; we add it whole, and then we remove it from whatever we’re cooking,” he said. “So we still get that really good flavor without the heat.”

Unfortunately, the pepper doesn’t feature at Mobay Cafe, due to its limited availability. “It’s impossible to find here,” Feeling said.

Nadine Dixon owns Mobay Cafe, which opened in August 2020 at 1022 S. 1st St. The restaurant aims to offer a taste of the Caribbean in Milwaukee, Feeling said.

“A lot of people may not have the opportunity to go outside the country, so she wanted to bring the cuisine here, in a very warm atmosphere where people can sit, enjoy a meal and share an experience.”

Mobay Cafe is open for carryout and dine-in, also featuring a full bar with Caribbean-inspired cocktails. The restaurant operates Wednesday through Thursday from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., Friday through Saturday from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. and Sunday from 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Photos