Jennifer 8. Lee Shares Fortune Cookie With Media

Tuesday afternoon, Twelve invited a bunch of media types up to the Hachette Book Group offices to share takeout from Grand Szechuan with Jennifer 8. Lee and learn about The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, her cultural history of Chinese food that comes out in March. One of the things she learned, which she told us a day before the story appeared in the NY Times: fortune cookies actually come from Japan. (She even passed some around.) We also learned that her original idea for the book was to do just the cultural history aspects of the story, although with quite a bit of travel involved—like visiting General Tso’s homeland to find out where that chicken dish came from. But then, she explained, Twelve editor Jon Karp challenged her to find the best Chinese restaurant in the world. The results of her 16-country search? A place in a suburban strip mall near Vancouver.

When I caught up with Lee afterwards, she was explaining to Kyle Smith of the New York Post how she’d managed to write the book without taking a leave of absence from the Times, by switching temporarily to an evening shift and, when absolutely necessary, using all the comp days she had coming. So what was it like now, I wondered, working for the paper’s online “City Room” and living on blog time? She was learning to write with Sunday Styles clarity under AP-style deadlines, she laughed. And then we all pretty much had to go back to work.

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