While a student at Xavier University, Melisande worked “front of the house” at a popular neighborhood restaurant and the seed of her passionate affair with professional cooking was planted. After working as one of the first Certified Construction Inspectors in the city, the demands of a growing family led to a decade-long position of CEO at HOME. The time was filled with cooking and party planning and, eventually, she landed in a local accredited culinary apprenticeship program. Mélisande worked with accomplished mentors in the New Orleans culinary community and she honed the focus of her cooking in classic European-African-Caribbean-Creole foodways.
After a natural disaster destroyed her family home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Melisande journeyed to Ghana, West Africa and explored traditional cooking methods and ingredients that influenced regional southern cuisine. Returning to the United States, Melisande settled in Austin and was a member of Whole Foods Market Austin Culinary Catering Chefs and Culinary Instructors. In 2010, seven trips to New Orleans in one year convinced Melisande to, once again, take a leap of faith back into the nurturing embrace of the Crescent City, Jazz, and the culture of love, food, and acceptance that no other place provides. Laissez le bon temp rouler, mes amis.
