Fortune Cookie – Niskayuna, NY

The closest Chinese takeout restaurant to my house resides in a shopping plaza with Hannaford (3333 Consaul Rd) in Niskayuna. One evening, I figured I’d grab a few items for dinner.

One thing I’ve been ordering forever from takeout is boneless spare ribs ($6). It’s one of my guilty pleasure foods. I’m damn aware that it’s one of the fattiest parts of the pig marinated in a sugary sauce, then grilled and slathered with and even thicker sugary sauce with tons of artificial color. Even when these are bad, they’re good. In this case, they were fine.

Same thing for the egg roll ($1.30). Mine retained a lot of oil, and that’s usually a function of how clean and how hot the frying oil is, but that’s not going to make me rush to any conclusions.

The most notable thing about this trip was the other dish I ordered: String Bean w. Garlic Sauce ($7.55).

Ok. Now, most Chinese takeout places (especially around here) have very standard, corn starch-thickened brown sauce that goes with all of the different combinations of dishes. When there may be hundreds of items on a menu, it can usually be pared down to sauteed meat with different vegetables in a slight variation of the brown sauce.

At Fortune Cookie, the string bean with garlic sauce is sauteed string beans with a more orange and sweet General Tso sauce. I really didn’t know how to feel about it. It tasted fine, and, one hand, there’s nothing wrong with General Tso sauce, so having healthy green beans tossed in it felt like a big cheat. On the other hand, I already had the sweet boneless spare ribs, so I wanted the more savory brown sauce that usually comes when you order garlic sauce.

I’m still kind of torn about this.