The Fortune Cookie Chronicles


  • #26 on the New York Times Best Seller List
    and featured on The Colbert Report, Martha Stewart, TED.com, CNN, The Today Show, Good Morning America, Charlie Rose Tomorrow, Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, and NPR stations coast to coast. Also selected for Borders Original Voices and Book Sense. Follow me on Twitter! Fan me on Facebook.

  • Archive for February, 2009

    Busy Weekend. Talks in Princeton, St. Louis and Toledo

    Friday, February 27th, 2009

    Lots of talks this weekend and lots of early morning flights. Just did a talk at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (which is like a university with no students, and host to Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, Kurt Gödel and  J. Robert Oppenheimer) I spoke as part of the Cuisine & Culture lecture […]

    Did Martha Stewart Today!

    Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

    Two segments. One on Chinese food in America. One on fried turkey dumplings. Lenore Welby produced really smart segments. Impressions when I first walked into studios on West 26th Street. Metal detector. Lots of rolls of ribbons. Washer dryer. Huge kitchens. Nine Emmys lined up in conference room. “MARTHA” is all over the place. A […]

    Going to be on martha stewart show tomorrow…at 10 a.m.

    Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

    To make turkey dumplings!

    powerHouse party in DUMBO March 11, 7-9pm

    Thursday, February 19th, 2009

    Okay here is the invite (click to get full size version). Details: March 11, 2009. 7-9 p.m. 37 Main Street in Brooklyn (which is Dumbo). rsvp@powerhousearena.com. Sarah Murray is chatting with me.

    March 11 Book Party at Powerhouse Books

    Friday, February 13th, 2009

    powerHouse Books in Brooklyn is going to throw my paperback launch on March 11. But it includes a DJ (!). They have a huge 10,000 space in Dumbo (or is it DUMBO, can’t remember if they like it all capitalized.) As Publishers Weekly noted recently, the indy bookseller/publisher bucked a trend in that it has […]

    Speaking in Salem (Where the Taxi Logo is a Witch on a Broomstick!)

    Thursday, February 12th, 2009

    Gave a talk at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts today, which has an amazing collection of Chinese art — in large part because Salem was a shipping capital with China. It also has a Qing Dynasty Chinese house, Yin Yu Tang, which is famously and painstakingly disassembled and reassembled in the museum. But […]

    Globe and Mail: A New Greatest Chinese Restaurant? Hakkasan outside Vancouver

    Thursday, February 5th, 2009

    This Globe and Mail piece from a few months ago highlights Hakkasan in Vancouver (not to be confused with Alan Yau’s über-sexy, Michelin-starred Hakkasan restaurant in London, which I also went to). Richmond is also where I had chosen the greatest restaurant in the world (now shuttered) Zen Fine Chinese cuisine. The sister of Sam […]

    I’m Up Before the Sunrise at the TED Conference

    Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

    I’m at the TED conference in Long Beach, Calif. and because I have had to become an early riser on the East Coast to do Morning Buzz, I was up at like 5 a.m. this morning, Way before sunlight. A number of people had read The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, so I was touched. And some […]

    The Chinese Restaurant Workers’ View of America: Through Area Codes. Chinatown Bus Ads

    Monday, February 2nd, 2009

    These two are Chinatown bus advertisements for routes that go to the more obscure regions of the eastern United States. (Chinatown bus goes all over, not just Boston, NYC, Philly and Washington). Notice how they emphasize the area codes. That is because many Fujianese restaurant workers are not educated and thus don’t really read and […]