Fortune Cookie Tour

We pick up this local paper called the Bay Area Parent and one of the articles is about free fun stuff to do. One of their highlighted choices is to take a tour of how fortune cookies are made. Naturally, to us, that sounded like something fun. So we decide to go to Stockton St. in Chinatown. We find the "factory" and walk in. We stand there for a minute and I say, "We want the tour". No response. The woman that works there helps the next customer and again asks us what we want. I said, "We want to see how the fortune cookies are made." The woman say's "come this way, pick your baby up high, can you squeeze between these trays?" Now we realize this is not the kind of tour we expected. There are no tourists, no glass separating you from the wonderful fortune cookie making equipment; this is simply a very old Chinese bakery in Chinatown. We shouldn’t have been shocked, seeing that this street is where the locals shop.

So we follow the woman to the back of the bakery, squeeze between the cookie trays stacked on either side of the very narrow store, where the nice lady points to the very machine we were excited to see. Standing there, squeezed between the bags of flour, the trays of cooked and uncooked cookies, in the back of this old bakery with cracked orange tile floor, we stare at an extremely unimpressive 40-year-old fortune cookie maker. The woman pointed to the right side of the machine, saying in broken English "this is where the dough goes in" and then pointing one foot away, where we can see the cookies coming out and falling into a pink box one at time, she says "and this is where they come out." Towards the end of the process is where a little slip of paper is shoved into each one. We looked at each other half stunned and speechless. That was the tour? It was simply a greasy old machine that went around in circles. There was no workforce of ladies hand folding warm cookies, and then stuffing those scrumptious cookies with a fortune. No crisp white uniforms with clear plastic sanitary gloves. It was just a little bakery in Chinatown; anyone would walk right past it without even noticing it was there. Before we left the store the man behind the counter said with a big smile to Skyler, "now you know all of my secrets, do you want to buy a cookie?” It was a once in a lifetime experience that we want you to share with you all.