Inside Seattle’s fortune cookie factory

  • By Quinn Russell Brown The Herald
  • Wednesday, January 29, 2014 2:23pm
  • Life

On Friday, many in the Northwest will celebrate the first day of Chinese New Year. The festivities will likely include noodles and cookies that have been made at the Tsue Chong Co. in the International District.

The Tsue Chong factory was founded in 1917 and has been passed down from father to son ever since. It was the first local Chinese noodle supplier in the area.

Fortune cookies became popular in America during the 1950’s. Eng Shee Louie, the grandmother of current Tsue Chong manager Tim Louie, developed a fortune cookie recipe based on pastry flour, sugar, vanilla flavoring, eggs, water and coconut oil. The recipe is still used today.

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In addition to fortune cookies, the factory produces wholesale and retail products including dry noodles, fried chow mein noodles, wonton noodles and rice noodles. Got a special occasion coming up? They’ll even insert custom messages into your fortune cookies.

We took a trip inside the Tsue Chong factory. See our photos here.

And if you missed it, check out our story about what to do if you’re in the International District.

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