about cocoon
Meet Marijke Uleman: Chef and Founder
I didn't start as a chef. In fact, I still don’t really consider myself one. It’s hard to find a succinct term for what I do…
I started in psychology, studying people — how we connect, what makes us feel safe, what opens us up. From there, I built a career in brand and marketing, helping companies find their voice and shape how they showed up in the world.
But the most meaningful work I was doing wasn't happening in meeting rooms.
It was happening in my kitchen, around tables and in borrowed spaces with too many chairs and just enough food. Cooking for friends turned into gathering. Gathering turned into something I couldn't ignore.
So I stopped ignoring it.
i didn’t start as a chef…
food is how i understand the world.
I grew up in Northern California, where abundance was farmers markets on Saturday mornings, farm-to-table eating, and shared meals outside. I'm also Dutch, and I've been all over Europe, which taught me that every place has its own nuances around food and eating. The Dutch love their table manners and eating everything with fork and knife. I now love eating with my hands. Then I spent years in LA, watching chefs from everywhere do exciting, unexpected things with the patchwork of cultures that makes up that city. My life and relationships have also taken me into Mexican kitchens, Latin family traditions, and places where food is literally love and how you show up for people.
Travel changed how I cook, in that food became how I understood a place. How I learned about people and culture without needing to speak the language fluently or stay for years. You sit at someone's table, you eat what they're eating, and suddenly you get something about how they live, what they value, what brings them joy.
That's the part that stuck. That's what I bring to the table.
i’m self taught.
I'm self-taught, which means cooking is less about technique and more about how I make sense of the world. It's my creative language, my way of processing things.
Honestly, I don't know how I know what I know. It's like I was bit by a radioactive spider and woke up one day and could cook. I'm not questioning it — it's too much fun.
The food is not separate from the experience. There's a story, a through line. Layers of flavor and texture and contrast until something clicks. I'm not chasing Michelin stars (though I wouldn't turn one down). I'm after that moment when a dish feels completely right for the people eating it and the night unfolding around them.
Food is my medium. The table is my canvas. The real work is what happens when people gather and actually settle in.
Not just show up — arrive. When there's enough time that nobody's half-present and the whole experience is held and you can just be in it.
Food is how you get people there, but what unfolds goes past the plate. People relax. Conversations get real. Something shifts. You walk in as yourself. You leave slightly altered.
A cocoon holds you while something changes, then lets you go. That's the idea.
I'm grateful for the doors that kept opening. For every person who gathered, who showed up, who told a friend, and said yes to something new. For the people who've let me into their lives through their gatherings. For the friends who became collaborators, the strangers who became regulars, the people who believed in this before it had a name.
I'm grateful to myself for taking the chance. For betting on this. For choosing to do my art instead of just talking about it.
Getting to cook and gather people and share this work with the world — I don't take that lightly.
what cocoon is
seasonal supper club
Themed dinners in New Mexico where the menu tells a story and everyone becomes part of it.
private experiences
Gatherings designed around your people and whatever actually matters to you
collabs & activations
Bigger events, creative projects, things that don't fit neatly in a box
The format changes. The why doesn't.
Good food. Real time together. A table that actually brings people closer.
That's it. That's the work.