Italian Culinary Retreats | Slow down. Live. Reset.
Pasta Sessions | Pasta Courses for Chefs in Italy
A slow, food-led journey, where daily cooking, cultural excursions, shared meals and local traditions define a deeply immersive week in Bedonia
BEDONIA
Province of Parma, within the northern region
of Emilia-Romagna.
WHAT IS
COOK THE MOUNTAIN
Set in Northern Italy, My Culinary Retreats are a deeply immersive food and culture retreat designed around the everyday rituals that define life in Bedonia.
Through hands-on cooking, market visits, tastings, and shared meals, the week unfolds at a gentle pace, allowing you to experience the region through its ingredients, traditions, and people.
Created for those who want to explore more deeply, the days are shaped by intentional moments rather than fixed schedules.
You will learn from local producers and artisans, cook with seasonal ingredients, and gather around the table to share food and conversation.
In between, there is time to rest, wander, and observe daily life as it is lived here in my village.
My retreats are centred on simplicity and connection, a way of understanding place, culture, and the quiet pleasure of travelling slowly.
CULINARY
RETREATS
Spring| Summer | Autumn:
April–October
The Italy as Italians live it!
This is your week as a local Italian. Each season brings a different mountain experience.
Different plants in the forest, different producers at work, different food on the table.
Every morning we go out - to the artisan, the farmer, the forest, the market that only locals know about.
Every evening we cook together with what the day taught us. No itinerary designed for outsiders. No restaurants chosen by a guidebook. Just Melina's world, opened up for you!
PASTA
SESSIONS
Winter:
November–March
A cooking & cultural experience
that reconnects you with real food, through place based experiences —
Organic and sustainable 0km produce -
grown, foraged, and made by the local
industry artisans of the mountain.
Farm to table
in the gastronomic heart of Italy
designed for chefs and food enthusiasts
eager to dive into Italian cuisine through hands-on creation.For chefs who need to find their voice again. For food lovers who want to understand Italian cooking from the inside out.
“taking the course with Melina in February changed the course of my life!” “It was the one thing that i needed which took me from a passionate pasta maker, to a professional. Melina has a sixth sense about what each student needs, and she reels you in and inspires you to push yourself to your own personal next level. i learned from her all of the important techniques, history, and practices of pasta in Italy.......as well as becoming privy to the secrets only italians have known for centuries! Melina is a rare combination of a professional teacher and a warm friend for each student. I am now proud to be running my own business and thriving, doing what i love. Sometimes it takes more than a class....it takes Melina!!!”
LISA CARUCC IO - USA
"Our host, Melina was knowledgeable, friendly, energetic with a great sense of humour. She made each of us feel special. The food experiences were to die for! We tasted food that we would probably never have tried on our own"
Tracey & Grant Luhrs
Chef Melina was glowing. Her joy, her warmth, the way she shared the history behind every ingredient and dish made the entire room feel connected. It felt like learning, laughing, tasting, and traveling all at once. This was not just dinner. It was storytelling. It was culture.It was one of those experiences you leave feeling fuller in every way
Anya Day
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CLIENT REVIEWS
Bedonia sits in the mountains of Parma on the border of Liguria — where two of Italy's most distinct food cultures meet in the soil, the forest, and the kitchen.
There are no tour buses here. No souvenir shops. Just the baker who has been here for 40 years, the cheesemaker whose grandfather built the aging cellar, and a forest that has fed this community for centuries.
Our home is Il Mulino — a converted stone flour mill by the river Taro, surrounded by mountains and silence. It is where we cook, eat, and gather. It is the centre of everything Cook the Mountain does.
You're in good hands?
WHO IS MELINA PUNTORIERO
"Born in Australia - Raised on Calabrian cooking - Living at Home in the mountains of Parma. This is everything I know."
My parents came from Calabria to Australia with nothing except the knowledge of how to feed people properly. They cooked without recipes because they didn't need them. They had the land, the seasons, a need to share who they are, and the memory of a food culture so old it predated measurement.
I spent 27 years in professional kitchens — two restaurants across two continents, a cooking school, fifteen years leading food tours across Italy. I’ve watched people discover what food is actually supposed to feel like, again and again, the moment they stepped away from the tourist track and into a real Italian kitchen.
Then I came home to Bedonia. I stopped running the machine. And I built the thing I'd always wanted to offer — not a class, not a tour, but a genuine week inside the living food culture of this country, this mountain.
Everything I know. In the most honest place I've ever cooked.
Melina Puntoriero
B L O G
