Twist of fortune

When Lam and Rossi's first sample fortune cookies arrived from Wuxi, Jiangsu province, they cracked them open only to find all the fortunes were written in Dutch.

The supplier exported to the Netherlands, and had not received orders of fortunes in English before Lam and Rossi.

"There are thousands of fortune cookie companies in the US," Lam says. But finding a supplier here was different.

Now the fortune-filled snacks are created in-house. Lam and Rossi put a box in the restaurant where customers can suggest their own fortunes. Some are quite localized: "Go to Pudong-you will find treasure there." Another customer left his phone number and wrote "call me", hoping for a date when someone cracks the cookie.

Lam says he didn't expect personal ads on fortunes, "but later we read more and more similar suggestions, and someone wrote 'marry me' on the suggested fortune".

"We screen the suggestions, and one rule is that if a mom and child read the fortune together, the fortune should make them both happy," Rossi says.