When I Heard a Montreal Fortune Cookie Factory Was Closing, I Needed to Get Inside

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Published 6:30, MAY 8, 2026

“SORRY. IT’S A SECRET. Goodbye.”

This was the answer I got when, about a year ago, on a creative whim, I cold-called Wing Noodles, Montreal’s oldest and largest maker of fortune cookies, asking if I could photograph the manufacturing process of their cookies.

Then, last November, I learned that Gilbert and Garnet Lee, brothers and co-owners of the Wings factory that had been in the family—and in Montreal’s historic Chinatown—since 1897, had sold their heritage-status building. Gilbert was awaiting a double knee replacement, and Garnet’s children had no interest in running a factory. Wing Noodles was to be shuttered at the end of 2025. Their beloved cookies, sauces, egg roll wrappers, and noodles would be no more.

The next morning, I went down to Wings in person. I explained to the smiley yet harried receptionist, Alice Choi, that I was hoping to speak to the owners about photographing their very last batch of fortune cookies. She told me neither of the Lee brothers was in.

I pulled out my business card. She pulled out a two-by-two-inch neon chartreuse sticky note, insisting that a letter would look more professional. I filled that sticky note, front and back, with a heartfelt plea.

On my way out of the shop, I helped myself to a freebie fortune cookie from a shoebox-sized Santa sleigh by the exit. In my car, I cracked that beauty in two. My eyes lit up.

I zipped back inside and asked Alice if she could retrieve my letter. “Oh, and can I also borrow a stapler?”

I attached my fortune to the note: “You find beauty in ordinary things.” Then I added a PS: “This is what people often tell me about my photos . . . I promise to make your cookies look beautiful too!”

After three weeks and several follow-ups, I finally spoke with Garnet, sixty-seven, the younger brother. He told me things were too busy in the factory, and it wouldn’t be possible for me to come and take pictures. After several fruitless attempts to win his favour, an idea sparked.

I told Garnet about my collection of vintage Montreal matchbooks and offered him a small stack in exchange for letting me shoot the hallowed last batch.

Silence. Then, “Which restaurants?”

“Mandarin Garden Cafe, Ricksha, Sunya, Jade Garden, Wha Nan, Lung Fung, Nanking, and the Welcome Cafe.”

“What are you doing at 2 p.m. today?”

“I’m photographing your last batch of fortune cookies!”

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At 2 p.m. sharp, I stood in front of the Lee brothers’ building feeling like I was about to enter a Chinatown version of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

Once inside, I was given a hairnet and free rein to shoot the spectacle, a veritable cookie ballet. As we watched the last of the crispy, folded desserts flying out of mechanized ovens (with built-in, automated paper fortune inserters), I put my camera down and asked Garnet how he was feeling.

“It’s hitting me. It’s really over after all these years.”

Before I left, Garnet handed me a slender box, filled with no fewer than 2,500 paper fortunes, enough pithy and potentially prophetic phrases to last a lifetime, and a small pile of gorgeous, 1960s-era Wings matchbooks emblazoned with their bygone slogan, “If it’s Wing’s, it’s the thing.”

After gracing receipt trays at countless Chinese restaurants for close to sixty years, Gilbert and Garnet Lee’s sweet treats are now just a memory.

I truly hope that, in retirement, they’ll heed one of their own best fortunes: