The Hong Kong and China Gas Company Limited officially established the Towngas Cooking Centre in May 1977. Its opening turned a new page in the history of culinary education in Hong Kong by teaching customers to experience the enjoyment of gourmet flame cookery.

State-of-the-art Facilities and Accomplished Chefs

The Towngas Cooking Centre has always been recognised for its well-equipped facilities and remarkable teaching resources. Through our instructors’ demonstrations and their own hands-on practice, cookery aficionados can easily learn the secrets of cooking, and make it an enjoyable pastime. Apart from offering culinary courses, the Centre also regularly invites locally and internationally renowned chefs to share their techniques and inspire our members. To promote the joy of flame cooking further, the Centre started the Cuisine Club in 1994. Members share their gastronomic experiences during the Club’s luncheon gatherings, exhibitions, demonstrations and other activities.

Food for Thought

We published our first cookery book back in 1977. Initially, all the recipes for Chinese dishes were published in English only. However, the book’s rich content and graphic illustrations, together with the associated food-tasting reception we held at the Cooking Centre, attracted considerable acclaim.

Our recipes seemed to become more diverse and inclusive as we entered the 1990s. Besides categorising the dishes according to their cooking methods, we also published them in Chinese, English and Pilipino editions, to cater to different nationalities.

The Flame Keeps Burning

The culinary arts have never been a privilege restricted to adults only. In fact, cooking together is an effective way to enhance inter-generational relationships. Apart from providing frequent cookery classes for parents and their children, the Centre also stages the Cooking Competition for Hong Kong Secondary Students. Our aim is twofold: to nurture an interest in cookery among youngsters, and to narrow the gap between parents and children, as well as the divide between teachers and students.

Out of the Kitchen

In recent years, we have opted to diversify our activities. We often leave our kitchen to team up with the Community Chest, Employee Retraining Board, Hong Kong Tourism Board, Department of Health, radio stations, food companies and restaurants to launch events related to culinary techniques, health and gastronomic culture. Their objective is to serve the public through different channels.

A New Era

Hectic city dwellers are usually burdened by enormous work pressures. Those with myriad affairs to attend to may discover that preparing delicious dishes can be developed into a lifetime interest that also relaxes their minds during the process. Always striving for excellence, the Towngas Cooking Centre introduced an innovative “one-stop-service” concept in 2004. The idea is to set up a venue where enthusiasts may attend culinary classes, buy ingredients, purchase cookware and consult reference materials. This puts all the resources related to gastronomic learning and enjoyment in one place. Students can thus immediately start to prepare their favourite meals when they get home from the Centre.