Chinese Food
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Tuesday, June 17th, 2008Here is an incomplete list of the some of the restaurants I visited for my chapter on the greatest Chinese restaurant in the world. This is not an endorsement for all of them, as you will find reading the chapter. Rather what my research turned up as interesting candidates. Not all restaurants here made it […]
Even more on the Baghdad Chinese restaurant
Sunday, June 15th, 2008The AFP’s Benjamin Morgan writes a story on the Chinese restaurant in Baghdad confronting violence. It makes $40-$50 a ady. Modest by American standards, but 4 to 5x to what the co-owner was making back in China. There is endless fascination on this topic of Chinese food in Baghdad, including Craig Smith’s 2005 story for […]
LAT’s Steve Harvey on the Fortune Cookie mystery
Sunday, June 8th, 2008Google alerts let me know today that Steve Harvey, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, does a whole column titled “Claims to original fortune cookies crumble under weight of research” around one of the central mysteries of my book. It’s one of the first times that there is an entire print piece that is […]
Mexican fortune cookies, called dichos
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008The Los Angeles Times food section did a recent piece on taco-shaped fortune cookies. As Tom Miller writes, Dichos, as the cookies are called, have been appearing at restaurants — Mexican and others — in southern Arizona in a haphazard pattern in which word-of-mouth has far outpaced formal distribution. Raul and Marina Montaño, the Douglas, […]
What is a chop suey sundae?
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008Sent to me by a Proquest executive. Proquest Historical Newspaper Archive is very useful for historical research. I would not have been able to do much on chop suey, Chinese restaurants, fortune cookie and General Tso’s chicken without it. She sent me an ad for a chop suey sundae…which piqued my curiosity
Maybe General Tso had a Mexican Cousin?
Tuesday, May 20th, 2008Erin passed me a press release that from Chop’t Salad which hailed “the Mott Street Chop with romaine lettuce and spinach, grilled chicken, snow peas, water chestnuts, and savory Chinese noodles drizzled with the recommended General Tso’s Chipotle dressing.” General Tso’s Chipotle dressing?! General Tso, promise you, never saw a stalk of broccoli in his […]
Fortune Cookies: “except in bed?”
Monday, May 19th, 2008This truly excellent comic from xkcd.com on the “in bed” phenomenon in fortune cookies.
Random Photo of Black Bird that has Nothing to do with Chinese Food
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008This has nothing to do with Chinese food. But I found this photo I took in 2005 on a roadtrip through the southwest while I was cleaning up on hard drive for Chinese food-related photos. Thus I am sharing it with the world
Fortune cookie fungus
Sunday, May 11th, 2008Was browsing the Internet doing a search for fortune cookie by Super K (Kari-out) and stumbled upon this blog post on Thoughts from Miller Manor about fungus that looks like fortune cookies. Â Yummy?
Beyond Chinese Cuisine @ The Asia Society on May 6
Thursday, May 1st, 2008Another event at the Asia Society next Tuesday, May 6. (James Oseland, Editor in Chief, Saveur Magazine, is really a very skilled moderator) From Silk Road to Steppe: Exploring Cuisines Beyond the Great Wall In the West, when we think about food in China, what usually comes to mind are the signature dishes of Beijing, […]
Tibetan fortune cookies? (well…divination dough balls)
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008Nate Barksdale remembered of his Let’s Go India researchers wrote in his report on Dharamsala back in 1998 — to wit, that one of the Dalai Lama’s lesser-known tools of statecraft involves choosing between balls of dough that had little notes hidden inside. (fortune cookie-ish yes?) There’s even an explanation from the Tibetan government-in-exile: Varieties […]
So what kind of jerky is this.
Monday, April 21st, 2008This is a picture of some kind of jerky in a Guangzhou market by a photographer named Charlie Grosso (“a Chinese American woman with a male Italian name” or as she put it in her offer to buy me a drink in Los Angeles “I am a Chinese girl much like yourself so this is […]
Mao, made out of hundreds of fortune cookies
Monday, April 21st, 2008Benjamin Wallace (author of the forthcoming book The Billionaire’s Vinegar) passed me this amazing artwork by Robert Deckey (his artist brother-in-law who apparently doesn’t have a Web site that I can dig out) — a portrait of Mao Zedong made out of hundreds of fortune cookies. Here is some promotional information from his 2007 collection. […]
Fortune cookie presents, some of them actually made in China
Saturday, April 19th, 2008Many people have sent me fortune-cookie themed presents and cards to congratulate me on the book. Here are some of them pictured here. (I especially like the jewelish-encrusted one). Some of them were even engraved. All came with a special fortune inside What amused me. Fortune cookies made not be made in China. But fortune […]
Spices of Life, Nina and Myers and Chang
Saturday, April 19th, 2008Nina Simonds did an interview with me for a segment on Spices of Life. She introduced me to a Chinese/Asian-ish restaurant, Myers and Chang (named for the couple who started it) in the South End. It’s very funky. Here are some reviews from Yelp.
A literary ethnic combo deal at Columbia
Thursday, April 17th, 2008I did a presentation at Columbia with my friend Sugi, whose new novel, Love Marriage about the many generations of a Sri Lankan family was published by Random House last week. The logic of the pairing was somewhat tenuous: we both wrote books, our parents were from the great continent of Asia, and we knew […]
Is Chink’s Steak an un-PC name?
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008Keith Richburg has an article today in The Washington Post about how Asian American groups are trying to lobby to get the name of a Philadelphia eatery changed from Chink’s steak because of its derogatory connotations. It was the nickname of a man because he had slanted eyes. If it had been called “chink” for […]
Stuff Gay People Like
Saturday, April 12th, 2008My friend Geoff Upton sent out a birthday invite for his party, called Stuff Gay People like, a play on Stuff White People Like. Come help me belatedly celebrate my 31st birthday with a celebration of Stuff Gay People (okay, Gay Men) Like: 8. Dance mixes of pop hits.Gay people love it when DJs remix […]
Fortune Cookie Chronicles quoted on Chop Suey in the New Yorker Online
Saturday, April 12th, 2008A few people had passed me this little item by Andrea Thompson that ran on the New Yorker’s web site on chop suey a few weeks ago, where my book is mentioned and quoted. Exciting. Born in the U.S.A. In this week’s Tables for Two, Ligaya Mishan reviews Chop Suey, whose tongue-in-cheek name has little […]
Unfortunate Cookies (the rejects)
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008Tsue Chong company (which makes rose-brand fortune cookies) in Seattle sells bags of rejected fortune cookies for like $7.25 a pop. These are the fortune cookies that go by too quickly to be folded (think Lucy and Ethel in the candy factory)Â I was brought there by the MSG150 crew after lunch. I thought the […]
Home on the red eye! Back to NYC.
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008Caught a red eye after my Elliott Bay event in Seattle (yay Jetblue) straight to JFK and showed up for work on Tuesday morning to blog. One neat convenience of being little is that I can sleep pretty well on planes. What I do: I tuck my feet into the pocket where all the in-flight […]
The Underground Onepot Dinner in Seattle with Fold-Pak menus!
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008The underground dinner in Seattle via Onepot.org was held in this discrete loft entertainment space in a semi-industrial area in Seattle. Yay Michael Hebberoy for organizing and Jerry Traunfeld + Xuan Che for cooking, and Jerry’s partner, Steven (sp?), for designing the adorable menus with the Fold-Pak motif!
Nixon’s Chopsticks, and Peking Duck Diplomacy
Monday, March 31st, 2008President Nixon’s chopsticks on display at the Nixon Library. Of course, his historic 1972 visit to China spurred a huge interest in Chinese food, especially Peking duck. Restaurant owners told me, with only slight exaggeration, that lines outside their restaurants formed overnight as a result of his visit. Â I actually added this photo to my […]
Bravo’s Asian Top Chefs at the NYC Asia Society on Wednesday
Monday, March 31st, 2008So the Asia Society, where I am speaking on April 16 with Fucshia Dunlop, is hosting an event highlighting the Asian Americans in Bravo’s Top Chef series on Wednesday at 6 p.m. Among the speakers is Hung, the Vietnamese American who won Top Chef. Details below. The popular Bravo reality series “Top Chefsâ€, along with […]
Fortune cookies are not a “food’ (according to our federal government
Monday, March 31st, 2008Fortune cookies are not necessarily food, at least, according to the federal government The Nixon Library made these adorable custom-made fortune cookies to promote my talk on Saturday (above). But the library is part of the National Archives which is part of the federal government which is not allowed to give out “food†as presents […]
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