The fortune cookie is a staple of American Chinese restaurants, but it is virtually unknown in China. It is actually a descendant of a Japanese temple cracker called 'Tsujiura Senbei.' These Japanese crackers were larger, browner, and flavored with miso rather than vanilla. The modern fortune cookie was popularized in San Francisco by Makoto Hagiwara, the designer of the Japanese Tea Garden, in the early 1900s. During WWII, when Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps, Chinese entrepreneurs took over the production, which cemented the association between the cookie and Chinese cuisine in the Western mind.