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Photograph

Woman making fortune cookies at Tsue Chong Co., Seattle, July 16, 1993

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Tsue Chong Company was founded in 1917 by Gar Hip Louie on South Jackson Street in Seattle’s Chinatown neighborhood. Gar Hip founded the company as a noodle factory to supply the numerous local Chinese restaurants. In 1924, Gar Hip’s son Fat Yuen Louie took over the business, moving it to 8th and King Street. In the 1950s, Fat Yuen’s wife, Eng Shee Louie, helped pioneer the manufacture at Tsue Chong of fortune cookies, which were popular in the United States. By that time, the company was supplying noodles throughout the Pacific Northwest, and now they began distributing fortune cookies along with their noodles. In 1992, the growing business expanded into a larger facility at 8th and Weller in the Chinatown - International District.

After being owned and operated by four generations of the Louie family, Tsue Chong was sold to the Cheng family in June 2019. Father and son Camillo and Isaac Cheng, who previously ran the nearby Golden Pheasant Foods, continue to make noodles and fortune cookies under the Tsue Chung name at the 8th and Weller facility as of 2021.

Here, Chui Har Chou makes fortune cookies at Tsue Chong. She is able to produce 500 cookies an hour, sliding each cookie from a small griddle while it's still hot, dropping in a fortune, and folding the cookie. This hand method was used mostly for special orders, where customers supply their own inserts.

Caption information source: “Product with a Future – Good Fortune Comes to Maker of these Cookies” by Lynn Steinberg, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 21, 1993, p. C1.
Caption information source: Tsue Chong Company website at http://tsuechong.com/
Caption information source: ” Fortune cookie, noodle maker sold — Tsue Chong under new ownership” by Becky Chan, Northwest Asian Weekly, August 29, 2019. Retrieved at https://nwasianweekly.com/2019/08/fortune-cookie-noodle-maker-sold-tsue-chong-under-new-ownership/
ID Number: 2000.107.19930716.2.20
Date: 1993
Creator(s): Brown, Paul Joseph, Photographer
Physical Description: 1 negative : color ; 35 mm.
Credit: MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, 2000.107.19930716.2.20, photo by Paul Joseph Brown
Copyright: All Rights Reserved