Every good Greek restaurant I've ever been to had a kitchen full of Mexican cooks. Most of my favorite Chinese takeout places were run by Koreans. Folks cook food.

Even the concept of food being "authentic" or "inauthentic" is pretty dumb. Pretty much every food short of raw foraged ingredients is the result of cultural exchange.

You could argue that an Italian cooking with chilis or tomatoes is inauthentic and that the resulting food is more Mexican than it is Italian.

Extending the concept from ingredients to techniques, you could argue that every food that relies on the cold chain (refrigerated/frozen storage and transportation) is an American food because the cold chain was created by an American.

It’s less the who and more the branding. It’s funny that one has to have the right “look” to sell you the food of a nation, or customers will reject it. The sorts of comments you hear while working in a Chinese run Japanese restaurant in the US…

For some reason, I took this comic to mean a Japanese restaurant that serves food from other East Asian cultures.

"Yeah, we'd love to hire you for the cook role here at Taco Time, unfortunately you're not authentic Mexican so we can't." - something never said before by a hiring manager.

People from anywhere can cook authentic food from anywhere else as long as they know what they are doing, so this is bs

It is a bit surreal to suggest your nation of birth or genetic lineage somehow influences your capacity to slap a piece of fish on some rice.

Also... if you want to get really anal about the history of the dish, narezushi originated in modern day Cambodia/Thailand, and first documented in ancient China around the 4th century. Meanwhile, the more modern techniques for preparing and serving sushi did originate in Tokyo in the 19th century, but spread like wildfire. Sushi restaurants were popping up in Los Angeles as early as 1906.

It reminded me of this asshole, who happened to be Italian, claiming that a professionally trained chef could not cook proper Italian food because he was Mexican

A professionally trained chief should be able to faithfully reproduce a litany of dishes from around the world.

Of course, there's a lot of regional variation and conditions. I might suggest that you cannot reliably produce a Genovese sauce outside of Genova, simply because you don't have the locally raised veal, for instance. But that's not a problem unique to chefs of a particular national origin.

Yeah, food is food.

As a white guy I like to make Indian or Thai from scratch. Sometimes I have asked an Indian friend what spices they would start with in dishX and he's said "you're doing it from scratch? I just buy the premix packets at the grocery store"

So who is making the authentic Indian food?

“authentic” in terms of food and restaurant culture is just a dog whistle for “racist.”

Like please. I’m not in Italy, it’s not “authentic” it’s just Italian food. Food is a universal language and words added like “authentic” are just plain bigoted.

Where would I go if I wanted to eat a.... the other thing you said...

More than 80% of donut shops in Los Angeles are run by Cambodians, because of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Ngoy

The culturally appropriate term is Donutlandia.

"Most donut shops aren't run by Hollywood cops"

Most Hawaiian Barbecue restaurants around here aren't run by Hawaiians.

I'm landlocked in the US and a Hawaiian BBQ joint opened up. A friend went and was disappointed because they were serving things like fried spam on wonder bread.

jokes on them, that's about as authentic as you can get without roasting a whole hog in the backyard while everybody gets pissed drunk.

Surprisingly a lot of Jamaican jerk huts are run by Jamaicans.

Preferably organically raised.

> huh, turks are not arabs?

> i suppose they be greeks then

I have to share this: I have learned that Türkiye has a culture of cats. Cats, tea, coffee, and delicious gyro. It was on the internet therefore it must be true. If it weren't for the government I'd be looking at a music fellowship there.

There was a slight empire situation there. You have no basis to complain about cultural appropriation as a Turk. But yes, many of the pilaf dishes in Asia have ottoman roots.

Panda express

Dude I'll just make you Chinese food at this point. you want my secret sweet and sour, lo merton (I fucked up the lo mein but it turned out okay and I kept the fuckup recipe. It just seemed disrespectful to keep calling it lo mein), or I can learn to make sesame beefles.

Came here to say this, as someone with first hand experience there should be at least a Mexican either doing the dishes or running the prep and maybe another hurrying stuff around or running the floor

Found the American