Singapore-born chef-patissière and edible-art pioneer Janice Wong opened 2am:dessertbar in 2007 and was twice named Asia’s Best Pastry Chef (2013, 2014) for her multisensory desserts that blend culinary avant-garde, design, and Southeast-Asian ingredients.
Born in 1983, Wong earned an Economics degree at the National University of Singapore, completed an exchange at Monash University in Melbourne, then secured the Diplôme de Pâtisserie at Le Cordon Bleu Paris in 2006. After stages at Room 4 Dessert (New York), Alinea (Chicago) and El Bulli, she returned home to launch 2am:dessertbar in Holland Village in 2007: a 70-seat late-night laboratory where plated desserts and cocktails mingle with interactive chocolates.
In 2011 she created 2am:lab, a 200 m² R&D space that hosts international pastry residencies and produces installations such as “Chocolate Paintings” shown at Art Basel. The World’s 50 Best Restaurants panel crowned her Asia’s Best Pastry Chef in 2013 and 2014, while Her World magazine named her *Young Woman Achiever 2011. Since 2018 she has been a resident judge on MasterChef Singapore, promoting pandan, gula melaka and regional cacao.
Global expansion began in 2016 with Janice Wong Tokyo (NewoMan Shinjuku), followed by a pop-up in Melbourne (2018) and Janice Wong MGM in Macao (2018) featuring a seven-metre chocolate fountain. In 2021 she opened Pure Imagination in Singapore’s Great World mall—the city-state’s first bean-to-bar factory with micro-urban cacao plots and educational workshops.
Her idea of “imperfection is perfection” celebrates irregular textures and vibrant colour: desserts plated on sugar canvases, marshmallow ceilings, sauces poured onto spinning plates. Leading a 60-strong team, she collaborates with research institutes on 3-D printable food and teaches bean-to-bar masterclasses to foster Asian cacao supply chains.
