Foodie Goes Travel explores food, hospitality, design, architecture and culture through first-hand experience, observation and conversation.

It is interested in the stories behind what travellers see: the memory and labour behind a plate, the thinking that shapes a hotel, the history held in a building and the people whose knowledge gives a place its character.

I am JJ Wong, a Malaysian writer based in Umbria, Italy, and the founder and editor of Foodie Goes Travel. I grew up in Kuala Lumpur and have since lived and worked across Asia and Europe. That movement between cultures shapes the journal’s perspective: I can consider Italian hospitality through an Asian frame of reference, and return to Asian cities with the familiarity of home and the distance gained from living elsewhere.

Before starting the journal, I spent more than a decade working in retail strategy, placemaking and brand development. This taught me to notice how places are shaped—not only by architecture and aesthetics, but by businesses, habits, landscape and decisions about what to preserve, change or introduce.

Living in Umbria has sharpened that attention. Here, food remains closely tied to season, land and repetition; hospitality is often personal rather than performed; and the identity of a place can be found in details too small to appear on an itinerary.

At Foodie Goes Travel, a restaurant story begins before the first course—with ingredients, memory, technique, land and the people behind the table. A hotel is considered not only for how it looks, but for how its design, service, history and setting work together. The same attention extends to shops, villages, makers and everyday rituals.

Some stories are reflective essays. Others are destination features, interviews or hospitality stories. All are grounded in first-hand experience and written at a human scale, as places are seen and lived.

Foodie Goes Travel pays particular attention to:

• Regional food cultures and the stories behind ingredients, dishes and traditions

• Hotels where design, service and setting form a coherent experience

• Architecture, adaptive reuse and the identities held in buildings

• Craftsmanship, makers, shops and the value of repeated practice

• Everyday life in Umbria and the changes reshaping the region

• Connections between Asian and European ideas of food, design and hospitality

Editorial Approach

Every story is based on a place I have visited, a meal I have eaten or a conversation I have had. I aim to describe honestly, provide context and distinguish observation from assumption.

Hosted stays, meals and collaborations are disclosed. Editorial judgment remains independent.

Work with Foodie Goes Travel

Foodie Goes Travel welcomes editorial commissions, interviews and collaborations with publications, hotels, restaurants, makers and hospitality projects that share an interest in substance, context and place.

I am especially interested in work with a strong human story: a person, an idea, a craft, a building, a landscape or a change unfolding within a destination.

For editorial enquiries and collaborations, please get in touch.

Contact Foodie Goes Travel

Thank you for reading.

JJ Wong
Founder & Editor, Foodie Goes Travel

Stories shaped by the art of noticing.

Follow ongoing observations and stories on Instagram at @foodiegoestravel.