Thirteen years in kitchens in Kuala Lumpur, Guangzhou and Taipei. Then a snack brand of my own, Truly Gourmet, and the factory that makes it. These days I also build the web app it runs on.
I didn't finish my diploma. I learned in real kitchens instead.
I'm not a programmer either, yet the factory now runs on a web app I built myself, and hardly uses paper anymore.
Not having the paper taught me to learn by doing, to ask simple questions, and to check things with my own eyes. That's still how I work.
Raised at my father's stoves, then running them.
Sorry, not keen to share the year, month or day. Every year, I'm 18.
Also spending toilet breaks on learning HTML, JavaScript and Python.
Look where it brought me today.
My father, Chef Keong, spent 32 years in the restaurant trade. I was raised by a family of cooks, and picked up the skills before I realised I was learning them.
Even before my SPM graduation, I enrolled without hesitation in the Diploma in Culinary Arts at Taylor's College. The course came from Académie de Toulouse in France, and I couldn't wait to start.
Life is like a box of chocolates, right?
My mother was diagnosed with cancer. I left my studies to help run the family restaurant, by then Keong Kee at Jalan Barat, off Jalan Imbi.
Keong Kee served its regulars for the last time. It was an honour to cook for them.
Other people's kitchens, a central kitchen, and a camera.
My Village Restaurant in Guangzhou invited me to cook for two months, including a Malaysia Night at the Shangri-La Hotel.
My father and I were invited to Taipei as guest chefs for two weeks.
I registered this site to share what I cook. I wanted one name I could use everywhere, so: 3than = Ethan.
the first logoA friend in Taipei asked me to teach a few recipes. That small request became my YouTube channel.
The Star came over to feature my recipes: "Food is in his blood – but he cooks for pleasure." Thank you, Abirami and Raymond.
I joined the central kitchen team at BMS Organics, developing new menus and making the food more sustainable, right down to the plate.
I left with a dream to chase. By then, 20 of BMS Organics' 42 outlets were organic vegetarian cafés.
I wanted to make a product of my own. In my dad's kitchen I fermented tempeh from every bean I could find: soybean, black bean, red bean, peanuts. It worked, but fresh tempeh lasts about a week. Then I saw one brand in Indonesia turning tempeh into chips. Chips could last a year.
I had a product but no money, so I took a job as a private chef in Taipei, for 14 months. Cooking privately put my skills to the test, and let me experiment with all kinds of ingredients and cuisines.
TaipeiI met so many good people there and unlocked new skills. Time to move on.
The year everything stopped, and what came after.
A new phase: I published my first eBook, Classic Chicken Recipe.
See the eBook →Home from China for Chinese New Year with my wife, then the lockdown. I baked cakes in my dad's kitchen, built websites, tried dropshipping. Nothing worked.
We were down to our last RM5,000. My wife let me take RM500 to test the tempeh chips I had shelved in 2018. I asked for unbiased testers in a Facebook group and drove samples to 139 of them across the Klang Valley. They scored the chips 8 out of 10.
We launched our first flavour, Sea Salt, made in my dad's kitchen. That became Truly Gourmet.
Visit Truly Gourmet ↗My wife and I did everything: up at 5 am, three hours of slicing by hand, then frying, cleaning, packing and shipping. We printed our own packs with a small screen-printing machine. At night we peeled soybeans by hand while watching Attack on Titan. Eleven months like that, in my dad's house.
Stop first. Let's go for a coffee and think it through.
Next came a bungalow, about 3,500 sq ft: two woks, two burners, no exhaust. It grew to seven deep fryers and a team of ten. Some days a meal was a can of baked beans and four slices of bread. I learned airflow the hard way, and it shaped the factory that came next.
Many times I wanted to quit. Each time my wife said those words above. Failing only means you've learned one more thing.
A factory, and the web app it runs on.
A 10,000 sq ft factory in Kajang, rented. Money was tight, so apart from the partitions and the wiring, I built it myself: the flooring, the staff toilet, the store, the high-speed shutter doors, the air cooler. It forced me to learn welding: stick, MIG and TIG. Our snacks now sit on the shelves of Village Grocer, Jaya Grocer, AEON, Watsons and more.
Our first certification. Halal is about much more than the ingredients: hygienic practice, checking where every ingredient comes from, and food safety standards.
The Truly Gourmet story ↗As heard on BFM 89.9 and BFM 财今: two interviews, in English and in Chinese, on how Truly Gourmet began.
Listen and watch →The factory's paper records became Rapi, a web app I designed and built. Batches, warehouse, delivery and quality, all on one screen, on any phone or computer.
See what I built →Page by page. You're reading one of them.
I run the factory that makes our snacks.
The web app I designed and built to run the factory, from raw material to retail shelf.
See what I built →Recipes I've cooked for years, and notes from the kitchen and the factory.
Back to the home page →A question about a recipe, or an idea for what I should cook next? I'm glad to hear from you.
Send me a message →Recipe development, brand collaborations, and talks about kitchens, running a food business, and building simple systems. Send a few lines about your idea.
Tell me about a project →Ethan Wong
