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 January, 2011

    Popular Irish Chinese dish: 3-in-1 = fried rice, curry sauce and French fries all in one.

    Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

    It’s actually not bad, carby overload, with cool crispy and grainy and sauce texture. It’s arguably the most popular Irish-Chinese dish. Best when you are drunk from beer, I’ve been told. Best description when they called it “Chinese poutine.”

    Cary Goldstein, New Publisher of Twelve

    Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

    Grand Central Publishing today abruptly announced that Cary Goldstein, publicist extraordinaire and deputy publisher, is going to take over as publisher of Twelve, effective immediately (their website changed quickly enough). This is covered by The New York Times, the Associated Press, Publishers Weekly. Cary recently signed a two-book deal with Christopher Hitchens, who was diagnosed […]

    Tracking Chinese restaurants, chop suey and fortune cookies over the last two centuries via Google books

    Sunday, January 9th, 2011

    This ngram is a broad metric of the concepts in Google books, and the dates generally track with my research: "chop suey" jumping around 1896, "fortune cookies" surging after World War II, and "Chinese restaurants" making an appearance in 1860, around the beginnings of the first waves of Chinese immigration.  " Notice how "Chinese restaurants" […]

    General Tso’s Soy Protein, from Wild Ginger in Williamsburg

    Sunday, January 9th, 2011

    Yummy? Or not.

    Like “A Year of Living Biblically,” but With Fortune Cookies

    Friday, January 7th, 2011

    Every day for a year, a writer, Matt Kelsey, is going to follow the advice of a fortune cookie and play the lucky numbers, to see if it really will make a difference. Here is his press release, which I was fascinated by in part because it’s on the Kansas City Star website. Sort of […]

    Donate to “The Search for General Tso!” (and get on IMDb)

    Friday, January 7th, 2011

    Help bring General Tso and his chickens to a theater near you! I am co-producing a feature-length documentary on American Chinese food with the Peabody-award winning team behind King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, called “The Search for General Tso.” We think it’s a great way to bring my research to a larger audience […]

    San Francisco Public Library Picks Fortune Cookie Chronicles for Its Book Club

    Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

    We’re San Francisco Public Library’s pick for January/February for their On the Same Page program, which is essentialy San Francisco’s bi-monthly book club. I’m speaking on February 19th in their Chinatown branch. Here are the details Saturday, 2/19/2011, 2:30 – 4:00 p.m. Chinatown Meeting Room Chinatown 1135 Powell Street, San Francisco CA