New & Noted: Fortune Cookie
What: American-style Chinese restaurant
Where: 4/F, 83 Changshu Lu, near Julu Lu. Tel: 6093 3623
Why: You wish Shanghai had a Chinatown
If you’ve ever gotten weird looks from fellow diners when you pour soy sauce on rice, Fortune Cookie is your new haven. This new “Chinese” restaurant doesn’t have a single dish that locals would recognize as their own but it’s comfort food to North Americans.
Fung Lam and David Rossi didn’t intend to open Shanghai’s first American-style Chinese restaurant when they first arrived last year. But after their original plans fell through, they looked to Lam’s family history to recreate the prototypical Chinatown experience, right down to the wire-rimmed pagoda to-go boxes.
Lam’s Hong Kongese grandfather started a Chinese take-out stand in Brooklyn and expanded his moo shu empire to 15 restaurants scattered around New York, New Jersey and the Southwest. His dad, an immigrant from Fuzhou, joined the team as a cook and married into the empire. Now Lam is the third generation carrying on the family tradition by bringing the flavors of the Chinese diaspora back to the Mainland.
American Chinese food is typified by oily, deep-fried dishes - and at Fortune Cookie, you are in for an authentic experience. The menu is imported ingredient for ingredient from Lam’s grandfather’s restaurants. This can prove ironically tricky, like when the recipe calls for Mott’s applesauce; a sweet substitution made when reverse engineering the duck sauce. But the neon orange dip is spot-on with its sweet and savory flavors, especially when it comes on the side of a greasy, flaky pork egg roll (RMB 19).
Try the chop suey (RMB 46); originally a dish designed to use up leftovers during the Gold Rush. Fortune Cookie’s version tosses smoked tofu in a wok with wilted broccoli, crunchy snow peas and crisp cabbage in a thick garlicky sauce - the perfect accompaniment to a bowl of white rice (RMB 5). The same goes for the sauce from General Tsao’s beef (RMB 82); a sweet and slightly spicy dressing coats deep-fried chunks of beef and sautéed broccoli.
A step above food court dining at a Midwest mall, pork chow mein (RMB 47) stir-fries pale egg noodles with fresh green onions, carrots and beansprouts. Glistening crab rangoon (RMB 45) are deep-fried wontons bulging with cream cheese but the crustacean flavor (if any) is buried underneath all that dairy.
In addition to bringing in American-sized portions, Fortune Cookie has imported the country’s attentive service style. A wicker basket of complimentary crispy wonton crackers hits the table as soon as you sit down. Half empty water glasses are constantly refilled by unprompted waiting staff - and expect to be asked at least twice how the food is. To top it all off, they’ve got free local beer flowing (although this might be marked up to about RMB 10 eventually), in addition to Rogue Dead Guy and a few other brews on tap.
The only thing that won’t make you homesick for your neighborhood Chinese greasy spoon is the interior. A chic version of a Chinatown restaurant, Fortune Cookie forgoes the classic plastic booth and kitschy décor for a sleek, upscale feel. There’s a neon sign or two and the occasional dragon allusion but it’s all tongue in cheek, like our cookie-encased fortune at the end of the meal: “The air quality will be similar tomorrow”.
