ABOUT US
One thing that has kept me grounded during this pandemic has been to indulge in my childhood comfort foods. Dishes that evoke memories and bring my olfactory senses straight back to my parents home town, Taipei Taiwan.
My name is Susan and my sister is Elle. We are part of the community of Taiwanese diaspora living in South Africa. We are the 18th largest Taiwanese immigrant community living outside of Taiwan. When travel was still open prior to pandemic, lockdowns and restrictions - it was still a long, tiring and expensive journey back to Taiwan, so naturally you’ll find that we have built our own little Taiwanese community in South Africa, who love cooking and bringing our culture's flavours to life here on the shores of SA.
WUNDERCOOK seemed to come together so naturally. When the country went into lockdown, we couldn’t travel back to Taiwan. We couldn’t see our family. We couldn’t walk the streets and eat the foods our parents grew up eating. So we started making it ourselves more often. We reached out to other Taiwanese South Africans who made dishes from the small island our ancestors called home that we couldn’t replicate. We started researching the histories and stories of the dishes we took for granted when we got to eat them once a year during our pilgrimage back to Taiwan. We tested, tasted, tweaked and threw together ingredients from Taiwan to bring to life dishes that we missed and craved that would transport us back to Taiwan in memory, if not physically.
The name Wundercook is a combination of wunderlust and cook. Starting Wundercook has given us the ability to express our passion for travel through food and share this with our family and friends in South Africa. Our ultimate goal is to allow all South Africans easy access to ingredients and recipes to recreate dishes from Taiwan and South East Asia in the comfort of their own homes. We want to introduce wholesome, nutritious home made meals with our fellow South Africans. Being able to run a local, sustainable small business with my sister has been such a great experience, and the icing on top has been the ability to support local Asian South African businesses and small immigrant businesses who make delicious food, all just trying to eak out a living and bring their childhood foods back to life in our beautiful South Africa.
We started with supplying Johannesburg and Pretoria and now are able to deliver our full range of products throughout Gauteng. Just recently we've also launched nationwide delivery on all our non-perishable pantry range.
Our vision is to one day be able to grow Wundercook to be your favourite Asian online grocer where you will be able to shop recipes that we've curated and tried from East and South East Asia and experience all these flavours in the comfort of your own home.