The signs remind me of traveling through Iowa and Ohio and places like that. (though these were both in New Jersey).

This is very odd. I looked up “Fortune Cookie Chronicles” on Google and was pleased that I was advanced enough to get my own little subcategories. It listed my most popular pages: Lee, Photos, About, Chinese food and then…a category called “Jews Love Chinese Food.”

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That startled me, because as you see from the blog, the category page it links to is called “Jews and Chinese Food.”

I actually only use the phrase “Jews love Chinese food” once on the page, low down, in a post. So I have no idea how Google knows that Jews love Chinese food, or why it chose that as the headline. It just does. Perhaps the fact that Jews love Chinese food is a truism, universal in knowledge. Or perhaps the Google engineers have a sense of humor.

It also made me really proud to work for the New York Times, because our content has been so good from day one. And the New York Times was as obsessed with Chinese food then as it was now.

4/22/08: India Goes Hungry; Secrets of Chinese Takeout
The world food crisis and Asia, with analysis by Asia Society Fellow Mira Kamdar… Food author Jennifer 8. Lee solves a Chinese takeout mystery… and upcoming Asia Society programs in Mumbai and Hong Kong.

To the podcast: http://www.asiasociety.org/podcasts/subscribe.html

To my episode: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/asiasociety/eqec/~3/276217508/weeklyfix20080422.mp3

(more…)

Available everywhere from shacks that sell it alongside hamburgers to highly rated Zagat favorites, Chinese food is one of the most iconic comfort foods in American culture.”Review
For over a hundred years, Chinese food has transcended religion, race, and picky eaters in American culture. More than a mere cuisine, it has become a cultural phenomenon — it’s a Christmas Eve tradition, a midnight indulgence, and a source of fortunes and good advice. Available everywhere from shacks that sell it alongside hamburgers to the highly rated Zagat favorites, Chinese food is one of our most iconic comfort foods.

In The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, Jennifer 8. Lee re-examines this beloved food with a series of questions. How true is American Chinese food to its forebears? Who is General Tso, anyway? How in the world do those fortunes get inside the cookie?

Lee’s cross-cultural culinary journey began in 2005, when she learned that 110 second-place Powerball winners — a lottery record — had used the same set of “lucky numbers” from Chinese fortune cookies served in restaurants all over the US, from Montana to Virginia. So many winners bonded by the same picks was a first in Powerball history. After discovering this unlikely statistical coincidence, Lee travels the country to interview the different people who won big off of identical fortunes. Lee then takes her fascination over to China, to see if beloved American Chinese dishes match up to the originals, and, in turn, develops a sort of origin story.

Over the course of this investigation, Lee tells human-interest tales of cookie and chop-suey copyrights, describing the fights that have continued for generations (in and out of court) over the origin and ownership of these edible classics. The book balances history and cooking lessons with Lee’s humorous mythbusting expeditions; she delves deep into the transnational world of Chinese food while also chronicling the development of food-delivery services and the rise of popular chains like Panda Express and P.F. Chang’s. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles is at once a historical, personal, and culinary tale that ultimately manages to be as savory as its subject.

-Diana Metzger

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food

By Jennifer 8. Lee

Twelve, 320 pp., $24.99

“This book began as a quest to understand Chinese food,” New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee writes in The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. “But three years, six continents, 23 countries, and 42 states later, I realize it was actually a personal journey to understand myself.” Born and raised in New York, Lee tells a story of immigrants through the cuisine they spread throughout their adopted countries.

The chapters read like a loosely connected series of magazine articles, with fortune cookies providing the framework. Lee begins her book by trying to track down 110 Powerball winners who’d found their fortunes through one set of lucky numbers. From there, she hunts for the origins of the Pacman-shaped cookie itself. (Japan, as it turns out.)

But she cracks other mysteries, too, like where those takeout containers come from, why American-made soy sauce doesn’t contain soy and “Why Chow Mein Is the Chosen Food of the Chosen People.” In her quest to discover the world’s greatest Chinese restaurant, Lee makes cases for — among others — a celeb-studded Parisian joint, a Chinese-American chain in Seoul and a pricey dive in San Francisco before settling on a discount fusion foodery hidden in a Vancouver strip mall.

The book’s not perfect. Lee has a habit of repeating herself, and a chapter on one troubled restaurant family drags on without resolution. There’s fat to be trimmed, for sure. But after you’ve digested all of that cultural insight and fascinating trivia, you’ll still want more.

– M.J. Fine