My pet theory is that the rise in the "Japanese" style of fine dining -- which to me is characterized by pristine ingredients and a sort of atomized style, where most dishes appear as a combination of elements -- is in part explained by a roughly concomitant growth in the weight of reviews in determining a restaurant's place in a hierarchy. Maybe I'm underrating the influence of professional reviews before the 60s, or overrating the influence of professional and amateur reviews now, but it does seem to me that "Japanese" style cooking is easier to justify intellectually, and for that reason more likely to earn the Michelin etc. plaudits that make these restaurants' names.

An audience can pretty easily grasp an account of the right grower/forager/fisher supply chains that produce really nice ingredients, and they're fun to write and read about too. And being able to discuss a dish as a sum of constituent parts (how many "nice" menus these days describe dishes as just a list of ingredients, one of which are unexpected?) makes the task even clearer. The built in diversity and, sometimes, narrative of a tasting menu also helps.

Compare this to the difficulty of explaining why a single curry or mole tastes good, where it's hard not to fall back on hand-waving terms like "complex", or "haunting" or something. These dishes are, at least to me, far harder to pick apart and analyze in a convincing way, and that sort of analysis seems necessary to justify "fine dining", from what I can tell. Last I checked this was reflected in the allocation of Michelin stars, for which there are close to zero Indian, African, or Mexican (to name a few huge cuisines) last I checked, (though I think Mexico may have made some headway recently.)