Where did the fortune cookie originate?

exceller

The modern fortune cookie originated in California. However both San Francisco and Los Angeles claim to be the cities it originated from. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_cookie Mar 23 08, 3:58 PM

zbeckabee

While the Chinese have no tradition of dessert, one competing legend of the fortune cookie suggests it was introduced in the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and the idea pirated by a local Chinese restauranteur. A Japanese American heritage is claimed by others, contending the cookie is a descendent of the sembet, a flat, round, rice cracker. The Chinese believe the fortune cookie is a modern Chinese American interpretation of the moon cake. Legend has it that moon cakes were used in the fourteenth century as a means of critical communication. In their efforts to stave off the Mongols, Chinese soldiers disguised as monks allegedly communicated strategies by stuffing messages into moon cakes. The concept of message-stuffed pastry has supposedly endured through ages. Perhaps the most plausible story dates back to 1918 when, in Los Angeles, David Jung, founder of the Hong Kong Noodle Co., invented the fortune cookie as a sweet treat and encouraging word for unemployed men who gathered on the streets. Some claim the cookie was more likely invented as a gimmick for Jung’s noodle business than as an icon of social concern. http://www.chcp.org/fortune.html Mar 23 08, 5:09 PM

author

The cookie’s path is relatively easy to trace back to World War II. At that time they were a regional specialty, served in California Chinese restaurants, where they were known as “fortune tea cakes.” There, according to later interviews with fortune cookie makers, they were encountered by military personnel on the way back from the Pacific Theater. When these veterans returned home, they would ask their local Chinese restaurants why they didn’t serve fortune cookies as the San Francisco restaurants did. The cookies rapidly spread across the country. By the late 1950s, an estimated 250 million fortune cookies were being produced each year by dozens of small Chinese bakeries and fortune cookie companies. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/dining/16fort.html?_r=2&pagewanted=2&oref=slogin This quote is from the same reference: Prior to World War II, the history is murky. A number of immigrant families in California, mostly Japanese, have laid claim to introducing or popularizing the fortune cookie. Among them are the descendants of Makoto Hagiwara, a Japanese immigrant who oversaw the Japanese Tea Garden built in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in the 1890s. Visitors to the garden were served fortune cookies made by a San Francisco bakery, Benkyodo. Mar 23 08, 7:38 PM

author

There are a number of different claims to introducing the fortune cookie. By far the most prominent, and most commonly cited, is from Makoto Hagiwara, a Japanese immigrant who helped build the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The dates cited for his introduction hover between 1907-1914. But in fact, he did not make them himself, according to many people around the situation. He actually outsourced it to a Japanese bakery called Benkyodo, which is still operating today, now at Buchanan and Sutter Streets, but no longer making fortune cookies. (lots of mochi and manju though!). I met with Gary Ono, one of the grandsons of the original founder. He remembers playing around the old fortune cookie machine when he was young. He has even dug up kata, the black iron grills, which have the engraved letters “MH” (but look like HM because reversed) — Makoto Hagiwara? Gary has made it his mission to spread the word about the role of Benkyodo in fortune cookie world. http://www.fortunecookiechronicles.com/2008/01/16/how-did-japanese-fortune-cookies-end-up-in-chinese-restaurants/ Mar 23 08, 7:49 PM

dj168

Two have claimed this, but the answer is Makoto Hagiwara. Makoto Hagiwara, of Golden Gate Park's Hagiwara Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco. He was the originator in 1909. Now David Jung, the founder of Hong Kong Noodle Co. in Los Angeles made it in 1918. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/20/NSUOVLB6K.DTL&hw=fortune+cookie&sn=002&sc=942 Mar 24 08, 5:36 PM