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Melanie Underwood

Founder

"The most important skill I teach isn't cooking—it's trusting yourself."

50K

Students

Years

Teaching

Years @ The Institute Culinary Education

Official Town Cookie of Rye, NY

Melanie Underwood is a certified culinary and certified mindfulness educator, published cookbook author, and the founder of Nourish and Gather.

She worked as a pastry chef at the Four Seasons Hotel, the Plaza Hotel, and other celebrated NYC restaurants before spending 25 years teaching at the Institute of Culinary Education.

Her work has been featured on Food Network, ABC, NBC, and CNN.

The Work

Through cooking classes and sound meditations, Melanie creates a space where curiosity leads to conversations, conversations create connections, and connections build community. Her approach - embodied nourishment - meets people exactly where they are and leaves them more confident than when they walked in.
As a certified culinary educator, certified mindfulness instructor, and regularly featured teacher on the global app Insight Timer, Melanie has taught over 50,000 students in 30 years. Before founding Nourish and Gather, she worked at The Four Seasons Hotel, The Plaza Hotel, and other celebrated NYC restaurants.

She is the author of Making Artisan Cheesecake, an Amazon Editor's Pick. Her work has been featured on Food Network, ABC, NBC, and CNN.

Why This Work Matters

We are living in a moment of profound disconnection. People are retreating into ecosystems of agreement, surrounding themselves with those who think and live as they do. Curiosity is becoming a lost art.
The table is one of the last places where that changes. Where people who might never choose each other still share something real, lean in, and remember there is a human on the other side. Food has always been a bridge across culture, generation, and difference. Melanie believes it still is and that now, more than ever, we need it to be.

The Table Is Where It All Begins

Melanie grew up on a family farm in Loudoun County, Virginia, where mistakes were welcomed and every meal was a conversation. No right answers. No wrong opinions. Just people gathered together, learning to trust themselves and each other.
That table never left her.

She's been building it ever since - one student, one class, one conversation, one community at a time.

What Melanie Hopes

That whatever brings you through the door, a cooking class, a sound bath, a conversation, you leave with something that stays. The ability to trust your own instincts. The curiosity to ask questions. The willingness to sit across from someone different and stay open.

The radical act of being kind.

These are not small things. They change the world.

Melanie's Mission

Melanie was put on this earth to make it a better place. Not in the abstract. In the specific, human, one-conversation at a time way. Through food. Through sound. Through gathering people together.

If that resonates with you, you are in the right place.