San Francisco Chinatown: Dim Sum, Tea & Fortune Cookie Tour

4.89

(150 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

Ever wondered what it smells like inside a real fortune cookie factory? I hadn’t either, until our guide Li led us through the narrow streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown and suddenly we were there—warm sugar in the air, metal clinking as cookies tumbled out. We’d already started the day with a table full of dim sum (the pork buns were gone before I could blink), but somehow everyone still found room for cookies. Li laughed when I tried to read my fortune in Mandarin—probably butchered it.

The whole neighborhood felt alive that afternoon. You hear Cantonese everywhere, mixed with the sound of delivery carts rattling over old bricks. After bubble tea (mine was taro, cold and sweet), we ducked into an alleyway where Li pointed out faded signs from gambling dens and told stories about sailors and haircuts that cost a dime. There’s this bakery we stopped at—can’t remember the name now—but the pastry was flaky and just a little salty. The kind of thing you think about days later when you’re hungry on a bus somewhere.

I didn’t expect to sit in a park eating roast duck from a paper box while sunlight bounced off red lanterns overhead. If it had rained, Li said we’d have squeezed into some tiny restaurant instead. The tea tasting at the end surprised me most; never realized how different oolong could taste when someone explains it right there in front of you. Left feeling full—not just from food but from all these little pieces of history stitched together by people who actually live here. It’s hard to walk through Chinatown now without remembering those smells and sounds.