COLUMN: It's Not Your Lucky Day

By Tobin Barnes
A good Chinese restaurant is a treat. (Uh huh, I know people who wouldn’t agree—hard-core carnivores, mostly—but for me it is.)

And then at the end of the meal, there’s another treat—a fortune cookie. Yeah!

Can’t really tell you why fortune cookies turn people’s cranks. Just one of those things, I guess. I’m as big a sucker as anyone.

Course, it’s kind of a sweet and sour moment, too, because you’re also getting the bill along with it, but, hey, so it goes. Besides, maybe it’s not your bill this time, and so sometimes it can be “all good,” as they say in the hood.

Anyway, you’re getting this fairly decent, vanilla-flavored cookie—talk about a cookie-cutter, every-one-is-the-same cookie, this is it—and even though you’ve already eaten a barrel full of sprouts and shoots, you’ve still got room for it. That’s opposed to those gut-busting, 3000-calorie desserts you get at other restaurants. (Mystery to me how people manage to pound down those chocolate mountains after a big meal.)

In that same little cellophane cookie package, you’re also getting this equally vanilla, middle-of-the-road, nobody-gets-hurt fortune on a little piece of paper locked inside the cookie.

As innocuous as the fortune typically is, people always—never seen anyone pass it up—crack the cookie to see what their fortune is, then pass it around to others at the table. It’s good for a moment’s har-har, if nothing else.

Cynics have made fun of this ritual with sometimes-hilarious mock fortunes. Here’s my favorite: “Dogs will lead police to your body.”

Now fortunes like that would certainly add spice, a little ginger maybe, to the end of a till-then satisfying meal. But, obviously, no self-respecting Chinese restaurant that wants to stay in business is going to go that far, even for a tentative black-humor laugh.

Nevertheless, according to a New York Times article by Tony Cenicola, there’s a fortune cookie company that wants to put a little zing into their cookie messages, making them much less bland than normal.

For example, “Today is a disastrous day. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

Not surprisingly, that might apply to most people on any given day.

And here’s another one: “It’s over your head now. Time to get some professional help.”

Ditto.

Yeah, these are a little more pointed than some of the typical Confucian fortune cookie bromides, such as, “If you enjoy what you do, you'll never work another day in your life.”

Good thought, but been there, done that.

The new wave fortunes are contained in the cookies of Wonton Food of New York City, the country’s biggest fortune cookie maker. So don’t be shocked if you get one, as their new-style cookies are spreading into restaurants across the nation.

But to admittedly mixed reaction.

The Times article quotes one blogger who got the “professional help” cookie: “I shot the audacious baked item a dirty look and proceeded to eat it. And I hope it hurt.”

Bernard Chow, marketing coordinator at Wonton Food, says “We wanted our fortune cookies to be a little bit more value-added. We wanted to get some different perspective, to write something that is more contemporary.”

Mission accomplished. Here’s some more:

“Perhaps you’ve been focusing too much on yourself.”

“Your luck is just not there. Attend to practical matters today.”

“There may be a crisis looming, be ready for it.”

Yowsa!

And here you were, just out for the night, looking for some wonton soup, a couple egg rolls, and a plate of beef and broccoli.