Few things might seem as crazy as opening a Chinese takeout restaurant that is completely American style in Shanghai.

But David Rossi and Fung Lam from the United States have made such a crazy idea come true.

Their restaurant, Fortune Cookie, a Chinese-American restaurant located on Changshu Road in Jing’an District, has now survived for nine months.

“Before starting the project, we knew it will become either a very good or a very bad idea,” says Lam, who is from New York. “Now, we’ve been through so many months and it has proved to be a good idea.”

A fortune cookie is a sweet, crispy, bow-shaped treat popular at restaurants as the finale of a Chinese meal in the United States. A piece of paper with a prediction is inside the cookie.

“When people see our name, they can immediately know what we are,” Lam says. “As a foreign Chinese restaurant, that’s a name identified with American style and able to attract attention and get people talking about it.”

Walking into the restaurant, you may have the feeling of walking into a Chinatown restaurant in the US.

From the table settings to the chairs and the windows, visitors feel an American vibe throughout.

Here, people can find traditional Chinese dishes such as moo shu pork and shrimp toast cooked in an American style and served in large plates. Unfortunately the most popular “Chinese” dishes in the US, egg foo yung and chop suey, cannot be found here.

Some dishes may seem a bit strange — while Chinese like to keep the bones in the food, Americans don‘t like to deal with bones. The bones are removed from almost all the dishes.

The restaurant also offers crab Rangoon, fried wonton filled with Philadelphia cream cheese, spices and homemade sweet chili sauce. Another dish is chicken lettuce wraps, with wok-seared minced ginger chicken, green onions and water chestnuts, served in lettuce. There also is orange chicken, battered and double-fried boneless chicken, wok-tossed in a special orange sauce.

Lam’s family, starting from his grandfather from Hong Kong, has specialized in preparing takeout Chinese fare. His father, brother and extended family are now running 15 restaurants in New York, New Jersey, Texas and Arizona.

To guarantee the genuine American-style taste of the Chinese dishes, Lam’s father trained the Chinese chefs for six weeks before the place opened. Lam also makes sauces and spices with family-secret recipes every day.

“Fortune cookies are something to share with friends. The restaurant has the same concept, focusing on fun. It’s a nice and lively place for hanging out with friends and family,” Lam says. “We serve dishes in big plates. They are meant to be shared. This is a place for laughing and drinking.”

Lam and Rossi met each other in a master’s program in hospitality management at Cornell University. At the time, they already thought they would “one day open something together.”

In 2011, Lam quit a job with a restaurant company and Rossi left a casino company.

“We decided to take on a big gamble in China,” Rossi says.

When they came to China in 2012, they weren’t thinking about opening a place like this. They were on a two-week vacation, touring around China, visiting places such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Guangzhou and Hainan.

“These are fascinating places. Shanghai, in particular, is known for its international community. It has a lot in common with Los Angeles, a cultural melting pot. The city is diverse and fast,” Rossi says. “Here, we feel the impulse of new development in China. Two weeks finally has turned out to be two years of business development till now.”

For the first eight months, the two business partners paid visits to many streets and alleys in Shanghai by foot, looking for a suitable place to open the restaurant.

“There are a lot of people full of energy here. The Metro is crowded. All the restaurants are full. At every corner you turn, you see the hustle and bustle. This is not happening everywhere in the US,” Rossi says.

“Many landlords thought our idea was crazy. The landlords needed reliable tenants. Many of them didn’t give us a chance,” Rossi says. “The biggest difficulty was making the idea a reality. It takes a lot of planning. But we made it.”

In August, when the restaurant had just opened, Rossi sent out fortune cookies to nearby office buildings as a promotion.

The hands-on partners say they welcome both expats and local diners.

Address: 4/F, 83 Changshu Rd

Tel: 6093-3623