Welcome to Cook with Ipohbunny, a collection of family recipes and culinary discoveries gathered through a lifetime of eating, cooking and storytelling.
My name is Alexandra Wong, though most people call me Alex.
I’m a Malaysian journalist who spent more than a decade documenting the people, traditions and stories behind memorable meals.
Since 2020, I’ve been sharing tried-and-tested recipes on this website. They are inspired by my Malaysian Chinese heritage, years of interviewing chefs and restaurateurs, and a healthy curiosity about what makes a dish worth cooking again and again.
From corporate sales to food journalism
I grew up in a family of great cooks. Dad is Hakka, while Mum is Hokkien with Nyonya roots. Along with my extended family members, they could pretty much out-cook any restaurant in Ipoh (absolutely un-biased opinion of course).
Still, my love affair with food was confined to just eating it, until everything changed in 2005.
After a near-death accident (which you can read about here), I left corporate life to become a freelance writer.
A media friend helpfully pointed out that newspapers were always looking for authentic food stories and encouraged me to write about the small, offbeat eateries I kept discovering. I started with places I already loved and knew to be good, and before long, I had made my name as the go-to person for local hidden gems, food or otherwise.
To me, the most interesting thing was never the food.
It was the human stories.
One talented chef was a former bodybuilder. A restaurateur shared how, after years of ignoring him, his brother-in-law finally walked through the door to try his food after reading my article. Another café owner recalled how, after months of struggling for customers, a crowd descended on the shop “like a tsunami” the day my story appeared in the paper.
Those were my first glimpses of the impact that good storytelling can have.
These encounters taught me that food is never just about what is on the plate. It is about family, resilience, identity and community.
That belief continues to shape everything I write today.
Why I started a cooking website
When you meet this many talented and passionate chefs, it’s a matter of time before you start getting curious about the process.
My kitchen became my lab.
As my culinary skills improved, creating a website to preserve my own experiments and family recipes was a natural progression.
After a while, I thought, hey I have interviewed so many chefs for the media. Why not ask them to share recipes too?
Then I thought, I could collect recipes from other friends and give them a permanent home that they can easily refer and share.
When COVID19 came along and I learned more about the tremendous challenges that F&B operators face daily, I felt it would be meaningful to document how they overcame them and, hopefully, inspire other small businesses to carry on.
My plans for Cook with Ipohbunny
Today, Cook With Ipohbunny is part recipe archive, part food journal and part celebration of Malaysian food culture.
Truth be told, I don’t want to limit it to that … its role in my life is still evolving.
It’s opened the doors to some wonderful opportunities in my post-journalist career, like joining Jackie M – celebrated Australia-based Malaysian author, former restaurateur and Masters of Malaysian Cuisine founder – on a culinary tour of my home state Perak as a creator journalist.
The growth I experienced on this journey empowered me to compile my Mum’s recipes into a cookbook for her 80th birthday. I cooked, wrote, photographed and designed the book from scratch, something I could have never imagined doing in the past.
Who knows what the future holds?
My Cooking Philosophy
I have three simple rules when it comes to cooking
- Keep it practical.
2. Make the best of what you already have.
3. And never be afraid to improvise.
My unofficial motto? The best recipes come from happy accidents and the most ingenious hacks are invented by lazy cooks 😛
A few random things about me
1. I was born in Ipoh, spent much of my adult life in Kuala Lumpur, and now live in Penang.
2. Before becoming a writer, I sold computers and … milk powder (a story for another day).
3. I only started cooking seriously after I got married. Before that, I was terrified to even fry an egg.
4. My husband remains the first-line guinea pig for all my cooking experiments.
5. I love recreating restaurant favourites at home, simplifying complicated techniques and helping busy home cooks make delicious food without unnecessary fuss.
