When: July 20
Fortune Cookie Day on July 20th celebrates one of the great food myths in American culture. The fortune cookie is served at the end of virtually every Chinese-American restaurant meal as an "authentic" Chinese tradition — but it was invented in California, its origins are disputed between Japanese and Chinese American communities, and it is essentially unknown in mainland China. It's a fascinating case study in how food myths form.
Fortune cookies are not Chinese — they were invented in California, probably by a Japanese immigrant, and are virtually unknown in China itself.
Fortune cookies are made from a thin, sweet batter baked into a flat disc, then folded while still hot around a slip of paper printed with a fortune, aphorism, or lucky numbers. The folding must happen within seconds of coming out of the oven — the cookie hardens almost immediately. Industrial production uses automated folding machines that work with extraordinary speed. The origin dispute is genuinely unresolved. The most widely credited origin story involves Makoto Hagiwara, a Japanese immigrant who designed San Francisco's Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park and claims to have served fortune cookies with tea there as early as 1914. A competing claim comes from David Jung, a Chinese immigrant who founded the Hong Kong Noodle Company in Los Angeles and claimed to have distributed fortune cookies on the streets of L.A. around 1918 as charity for the poor. In 1983, a mock trial held in San Francisco — complete with judge, evidence, and witnesses — found in favor of Hagiwara's...