THE STORY OF LA MAISON DE GEORGE

左字廚房

George Kitchen

BTW, George is a SHE^^! A female chef.

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Born into a family of restaurateurs,

Chef George Learned to cook in her family's restaurants beginning when she was 15. 

In 2010, she started her won business, George Kitchen, of which she is executive chef.

She is the 2011 Canton/Macau/Hong Kong Professional Cooking Competition Champion,

and a 2014 recipient of Grand Diplôme in French Cuisine and French Pastry from Le Cordon Bleu, Paris.  

Her talents in fashion designing, painting, writing,

and French & Chinese Heritage Cooking

make her a distinctive and versatile culinary artist.

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BACKGROUND

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George has been passionate about food her whole life. Her family owned several Chinese restaurants, and she practically grew up their kitchens. Helping in the restaurant became an after-school routine since she was 15. Yet back then, she never gave a thought to becoming a professional chef—she only dreamed of leaving her traditional village on the outskirts of Hong Kong and establishing herself in some cosmopolitan location. Which she did: first in metropolitan Hong Kong, then Taiwan, Japan, and France.

But life changed dramatically when she was injured in a car accident. With her health seriously impaired, she began to research the best way to nurture her body back to health. Because she feels strongly that “you are what you eat,” part of her path back to well-being involved adapting her cooking towards a more consciously healthy diet in order to increase her vigor and confidence. This experience caused her to take her cooking seriously enough to consider it as her lifelong career.

She is gratified to return to food—for George, food has already transcended the mundane stuff we nourish ourselves with to become the source of her revelation as well as the bridge between her and her family, her friends, and the world. No matter where she has been or what she was doing, cooking has always been her comfort.

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EXPERIENCES

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Looking back at the occupations she had before becoming a chef—model, art director, make-up artist, fashion designer, jewelry designer, flight attendant, university instructor —she now realizes that they all have an impact on her cooking today. Her path to culinary art has been long and arduous, but George feels that it is finally time to share what she has learned and loved.

Proof of what she has learned can be found within the pages of her first cookbook, Simply Vegetarian (學素), which was co-authored with Leila Tong唐寧. Published in 2014 while she was still attending Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Paris, France, it caused more than one sleepless night, and she finished the first draft of the book a mere four days before completing the culinary final exams that earned her the highest degree (Grand Diplôme) that the French cooking school offers.

After her jubilant graduation from Le Cordon Bleu, she, as the 26th generations of TANG Clan,  has come full circle back the village , Ping Shan, where she grew up. This time, however, she embraces the place with an open heart, finding it to be just the right location to pursue her passion for culinary art. And now she is working towards the next stage of her career: the fruition of her dream of continuing in the culinary art that three generations of her family have shared.

She is doing this in her family's 300+-year-old traditional village-style stone and brick house, which she has renovated into George Kitchen Private Kitchen & Culinary Workshop, and where she teaches conventional and fusion French /Chinese cuisine and French pastry. She serves her Chinese Traditional Walled Village Cuisine at dinner parties served in a dining room on the second floor of her house that doubles as a gallery for her drawings and paintings. The dining area, and indeed the rest of the house, is tastefully decorated with antique furniture, vintage French and Chinese ceramics, traditional Chinese housewares, and art.

ACHIEVEMENTS

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George has been teaching full time at the Faculty of Hospitality and Tourism Management in Macau University of Science and Technology as University Instructor, teaching French/Asian/Chinese Culinary and Patisserie, Food Culture and History. Under her professional intensive training for the 2018 Korean KINTEX International Culinary Competition, two of her university culinary students had won the Championship and Special Chef Price.

Nowadays, beside collaborating with different associations such as Hong Kong Arts Centre 香港藝術中心, Hong Kong Food Council香港食品委員會. She appears on television and radio shows and in magazines, gives speeches and public talks globally , was the subject of a Google documentary (Search for the Taste Buds 舌尖上的搜尋旅程), and was a finalist for the Spirit of Hong Kong award sponsored by the South China Morning Post. Chef George is also consulting for restaurants, judging culinary competitions, and focusing increasing attention on her own heritage.

NEXT

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Inspired by the slices of history that is her home, she is seeking out traditional village recipes and cooking methods from among her neighbors and collecting historical information that she is hoping to assemble into one of her upcoming cookbook collections.

As for her next coming up project ‘Fusion Nordic’, she is very much inspired by the Nordic cuisine and pastry, especially the wide range of healthy, ethnical, sustainable ingredients. She will be combining her wide range of traditional authentic Chinese and French cuisine/pastry skills with Nordic culinary to introduce a more global healthy-living-style way of cooking to share in Nordic. And she also promoting simple Chinese steaming cooking techniques with the using of Chinese herbal ingredients in her cooking, too. This inspiration was influenced by her grandfather, who was also a Chinese medical doctor.

On the other hand, she is also working on gaining more Nordic cuisine techniques and way of the Nordic living. And planning to share her Nordic culinary experience in Hong Kong by writing an introductory Nordic cookbook. With this “Fusion Nordic” project, she hope to build a bridge between Nordic and Asia to share her experience globally.

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Sharing food...sharing love...sharing heritage: for George, that is life! C’est la vie.

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