Located off of Jackson Street in Chinatown, in Ross alley, the Fortune cookie factory has been supplying fortune cookies to Chinatown and around the world since 1962. Inside the cookie factory you can see fortune cookies being made right in front of you: the thin circular dough is pulled off a hot press, then a fortune is placed in the middle of the hot cookie which is then shaped over a steel rod by hand before it hardens. Fortune cookies are often served as a dessert in Chinese restaurants in the United States and some other Countries, but are absent in China. The exact origin of fortune cookies is unclear, though various immigrant groups in California claim to have popularized them in the early 20th century, basing their recipe on a traditional Japanese cracker. Fortune cookies have been summarized as being "introduced by the Japanese, popularized by the Chinese, but ultimately consumed by Americans". Makoto Hagiwara in San Francisco is reported to have been the first person in the United States to have served the fortune cookie in the 1890s in his Japanese Tea Garden.