Fortune cookie origin dispute at Japanese Tea Garden

The Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park is often credited with popularizing the fortune cookie, with accounts attributing the folded cookie and its message to head gardener Makoto Hagiwara in the early 1900s. Food historians note documentation that Hagiwara served a folded cookie with paper messages at the garden. This origin is disputed, with competing claims from Los Angeles baker David Jung and other earlier California sources, so the cookie's precise birthplace remains debated.