Fortune Cookies

[Diane Amberg]

 I love Chinese food, even the fake stuff. Fortune cookies aren't remotely Chinese, but are fun  anyway. Recently after a pig out visit to our favorite Chinese Buffet, Al's cookie said "You and your wife will have a happy life together."   I had been just saying how much I had enjoyed the meal and my cookie said, "Enjoy the meal? Buy one to go too."    Got any good ones to share? Or things you would or wouldn't want to see in a fortune cookie?

[dnalexander]

Aaah, fortune cookies the San Francisco treat?

Who Invented the Fortune Cookie?
On (possibly) its 100th anniversary, the delphic delicacy is being used for a lot more than telling your future
by Joshua Tompkins

It's a mystery shrouded in an enigma wrapped in a cookie. Today's prepackaged meal-ending prophecy has Asian antecedents that go back to the thirteenth century, when anti-Mongol rebels in China passed secret messages in cakes. Beginning in the 1870s, Chinese railroad workers in America baked holiday greetings inside biscuits. But the fortune cookie in its present form, with a cheerful prediction or affirmation folded inside a brittle beige carapace carefully prepared to simulate the flavor of Styrofoam, is known to have originated in California early in the twentieth century. The only question is where.

San Francisco is one claimant, though San Francisco has claimed credit for inventing just about every pseudo-ethnic dish, including chop suey, Irish coffee, and cioppino, an Italian seafood stew. The supposed inventor was a gardener named Makoto Hagiwara, who built the famous Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. Around 1907, the story goes, Hagiwara was fired by an anti-Japanese mayor and then rehired after a public outcry. In gratitude, he gave his supporters cookies with thank-you messages inside, inspired by traditional Japanese senbei rice wafers. According to Hagiwara's great-great-grandson Erik S. Hagiwara-Nagata, a San Francisco landscape architect, "It was developed to suit American tastes by making it sweet."

Equally confident in its cookie claim is San Francisco's perennial rival, Los Angeles. In the L.A. version, sometime around 1918 a Chinese immigrant named David Jung, owner of the Hong Kong Noodle Company, began handing out rolled-up pastries containing scriptural passages to unemployed men. Another Los Angeles candidate is Seichi Kito, a Japanese-American baker who put haiku verses inside cookies and sold them to Chinese restaurants. The bakery he founded, Fugetsudo, still stands in Los Angeles's Little Tokyo section, where it is run by Kito's descendants. The shop recently celebrated its 100th anniversary, and a mold purportedly used to make the original cookies is prominently displayed in its window.

In 1983 the Court of Historical Review—a self-appointed, quasi-judicial organization based in San Francisco—held a trial to decide the question. In a theatrical atmosphere that would have seemed less startling a century earlier, participants wore yellow makeup and Celestial costumes and spoke in pidgin English as they presented the oral history underlying each side's case. The presiding magistrate, Daniel M. Hanlon (a federal judge in real life), ruled for San Francisco, as expected, but Los Angeles boosters ignored his decision, considering it as legitimate as a Dodgers-Giants game officiated by San Francisco sandlot umpires.

Whatever the fortune cookie's provenance, it became a staple in America's Chinese restaurants in the years following World War II. A great leap forward came in 1981 with the introduction of the Fortune HI machine, which automated the entire production process, from mixing the ingredients and baking the dough to inserting the fortune and folding the wafer. A skilled handworker could make about 750 cookies per hour; the new machine could turn out 1,500. Today the nearly 30-foot-long Japanese-made Kitamura FCM-8006W can produce 8,000 per hour. Mass production like this allows the East Coast's biggest fortune-cookie maker, Wonton Food Inc., of Brooklyn, New York, to ship 60 million cookies a month.

In the wake of its mainstreaming and subsequent industrialization, the fortune cookie has been pressed into service as an advertising medium. In 2001 Wonton Food began selling ad space on the back of its fortunes and baking cookies with custom-written messages inside. This practice, too, turns out to have historical antecedents. In 1960 a New York City Council candidate handed out fortune cookies that contained campaign pitches, and the director Billy Wilder had 20,000 promotional cookies made for his 1966 film The Fortune Cookie.

Also in the 1960s, Lotus Fortune Cookies, of San Francisco, was hired to make cookies with fortunes soliciting ideas for a new Pepsodent toothpaste jingle. Today the company specializes in custom-made fortune cookies for trade shows, weddings, and other events. Customers are invited to compose their own messages. As Greg Louie, owner of Lotus Fortune Cookies, says, "You write 'em, you read 'em, you eat 'em."

[pepelect]

You will be visited by three spirits.....


I hate to be the one to tell you this but you are pregnate.


Even if you go down the road less traveled you won't see anything new.

[flintauqua]

You will live to see the end of the world as we know it

[W. Gray]

Okay David, what is the story behind Chop Suey?

[dnalexander]

Okay David, what is the story behind Chop Suey?

I had never ever heard about Chop Suey having origins in California, that is a new one to me. I have eaten a million times in both the SF Chinatown and LA Chinatown. I even have a Chinese sister-in-law. I can tell you it is not even served in most of the Chinese restaurants that  I frequent. If I were eating Chinese food with my brother or his in laws and tried to order chop suey they would have stopped me. I could never eat chop suey and bring shame on the family. I will save my San Francisco origins stories on Cioppino and Irish Coffee for the Swimming Pools and Movie Stars thread.

My favorite fortune cookie fortune. (Not supposed to eat the cookie just read the fortune)

You should not foolishly gamble
Your Lucky Numbers 1 13 8 23 35

David

[larryJ]

David, I loved the fortune cookie thing about gambling!  HOWEVER, I must beg to differ with you about the chop suey.  Many of the Chinese restaurants that I visit and that is a lot, feature chop suey on the menu.  In fact, almost all of them do.  My daughter-in-law is Chinese and over the years has taken us to a few very old and authentic Chinese places and usually does the ordering in Chinese.  We never usually have a clue what she is ordering for us, but it is always good and many times includes Chop Suey.  I have a friend who is a jeweler in Chinatown here in L.A. and he has recommended places to eat near his shop, all of which serve Chop Suey.  Whether or not it is "kosher" to eat it remains to be seen.  But, I like to order it on occasion just to eat something other than my favorite Cashew Chicken with steamed rice. 

Larryj

[Tobina+1]

Don't you know you're supposed to add "in bed" to the end of all fortunes?      

You should not foolishly gamble... in bed. 
See it still probably holds true!   

[larryJ]

How about---------I hope you didn't eat this fortune cookie----in bed.

Good addition Tobina thanks

Larryj

[dnalexander]

David, I loved the fortune cookie thing about gambling!  HOWEVER, I must beg to differ with you about the chop suey.  Many of the Chinese restaurants that I visit and that is a lot, feature chop suey on the menu.  In fact, almost all of them do.  My daughter-in-law is Chinese and over the years has taken us to a few very old and authentic Chinese places and usually does the ordering in Chinese.  We never usually have a clue what she is ordering for us, but it is always good and many times includes Chop Suey.  I have a friend who is a jeweler in Chinatown here in L.A. and he has recommended places to eat near his shop, all of which serve Chop Suey.  Whether or not it is "kosher" to eat it remains to be seen.  But, I like to order it on occasion just to eat something other than my favorite Cashew Chicken with steamed rice. 

Larryj

Larry no need to "beg to differ with me" you go places that serve it and I don't I understand that. Most Chinese restaurants do serve it. Kind of like who has the best BBQ. Texas, Memphis, South Carolina, Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago etc. Also, the places I went always gave us a menu only in Chinese and not the one in English. Maybe it is a generational thing since my Sister-in-law could easily be your younger sister(by age). Only "low fawn" (my phonetic spelling which translates as white rice) eat chop suey.