Melissa Thompson is an award-winning food writer and author who started a supper club in her front room in 2014. Born in Dorset to a Jamaican father and Maltese mother, her food has always celebrated cuisines and cultures from around the world.
As a food writer, she has penned powerful articles on the British food industry that became focal points for important discussions around identity, diversity and inclusivity. She won the Guild of Food Writers’ Food Writing award in 2021 and was named PPA’s Food Writer of the Year in 2022. Her debut cookbook, Motherland, published in September 2022 by Bloomsbury, was featured as a ‘Book of the Year’ by BBC Radio 4 Food Programme, The Observer New Review Books of the Year, The Telegraph Top Cookbooks of 2022, Delicious Magazine’s Books of the Year, The Financial Times Top 3 Cookbooks of 2022 and many more. Alongside recipes, it explores the evolution of Jamaican food, from the island’s indigenous population to today.
She is a regular panellist on Radio 4’s The Kitchen Cabinet, has appeared on Saturday Kitchen, BBC’s Travel Show and features regularly on Radio 4’s The Food Programme. She is also co-director of the British Library’s Food Season. She is a columnist for BBC Good Food magazine, is a regular contributor to Guardian Feast and has written articles and recipes for Conde Nast Traveller, National Geographic, Stylist, Vittles, Waitrose Weekend, Waitrose Magazine and others. She has also run demos at festivals and cookery shows including BBC Good Food Festival and Pub in the Park.
A former feature writer in a national newspaper, in 2015 Melissa left newspaper journalism to pursue her love of cooking, with the supper club growing into a sell-out pop-out across locations in London before she left to have her daughter.
