When I go to a Thai restaurant, I also frequently hear the cooks speaking Mandarin Chinese (I'm conversant in the language).
Except when it does. Attention to detail and skills matter. Clientele demographic and competitive pressure matter too.
In most survivalist/subsistence businesses, the owner typically optimizes for volume and profit rather than quality. He/she will typically do just enough to appeal to a broad clientele and keep costs low. There is no culture of craftsmanship or perfectionism -- it's just business. The owner is merely trying to feed his/her family... there is a nobility in this, but it doesn't always make for good food.
Many suburban sushi joints in the U.S. run by non-Japanese people fall into this category. Good enough to satisfy an American clientele, but not really done to the level of a craft (e.g. the rice in the nigiri falls apart as soon as you pick it up, the vinegar is left out altogether, etc.) Sushi is a craft that takes years to perfect and commands a premium.
Truly good places are run by people who know the essence of the cuisine they are serving, and make an effort to be true to it. They don't necessarily have to belong to the culture of origin, but they have to be serious about getting the details right. Such places are typically not run as survivalist businesses.
As an enthusiast of Thai cuisine, I am grateful for the link.
Exception is San Francisco. There's a place in Little Saigon that is run by Thai people and she said the food there is exactly the same as home.
Here in Toronto we recommend Si Lom Thai Bistro. Which is good but not perfect.
Edit: Lots of Thai places in Little Saigon. Pak Nam Thai Noodle Bar, Zen Yai Thai Restaurant, Lers Ros....
Best guess would be Lers Ros, though Sai Jai Thai around the corner is more understated and has some solid dishes too (e.g. they offer khao kluk kapi, which is near-impossible to find outside of Thailand.)
Worth mentioning too is Saap Ver, around the Design District. Super legit, focus on Northeastern (Isan) cuisine.
Prime example (for me) is "Chinese food". Found all over the world, yet nowhere it is the same, let alone something a Chinese would call Chinese.
Better even, there is one particular Chinese dish that inspired a documentary about all its different implementations. The Search For General Tso. Check it out if you like.
> Good cooking doesn't care where you're from.
Except for some reason it's hard to find good pizza outside the Northeast. What's with that!?!
Well, it's not true for one thing.
Having said that my favorite Thai place is still Morningside Thai and I'm pretty sure it's native run.
I only really noticed this after I started copying some Gordon Ramsey videos I was watching online. Preparing easy, simple meals the way that he prepares them (taking care to select produce and quality dairy, using fresh herbs, etc.) yields food that's better than I've eaten in 90% of restaurants. These aren't the really long "how to cook like a Michelin chef with a blowtorch and truffles" videos, either, these are like the "quick and easy broccoli soup with goat cheese and walnuts" videos.
I can get better ingredients mailed to me than what I can purchase locally, and the meals taste better than the area restaurants.
Consistency is key, but seems hard to implement in practice.
Regardless, I've also been to Memphis, and I had some really good BBQ there, and I had a lot of really average BBQ. I think another problem is that a lot of regions coast on the reputation of their "regional" food, and there's a lot of people that aren't great chefs or aren't dedicated to the art of food that ride the coattails of the region's reputation.
Another big reason for the decline in the quality of these cuisines is that the old people who know how to make them are retiring and dying and their descendants aren't interested in maintaining their own culture.
Yeah, the BBQ was good, but I didn't get the "best in the world" effect in my mouth. I once ate meat cooked by a Texan at a house party, I was seriously impressed and blown away after the first bite. This guy told me that he caters BBQ parties in Texas as a hobby. He told me about his marinade process, it bordered on science. His skill was legit.
It's possible that the my Memphis friends directed me to the wrong restaurants. But if I can't trust the locals to tell me which are the best restaurants in their city, who can I trust? Plus, their opinions matched up with what I saw on Tripadvisor.
I'm sorry if I've offended anyone. But I've also anecdotally found that some people who brag about their food haven't tasted food around the world, so their frame of reference is a bit limited. For example, I'll never say I've tasted really good Italian food because I've never been to Italy, and my gosh, the descriptions I hear about real Italian food blow my mind (and I think I've been to a few good Italian restaurants in North America). It's just like my high school friend once recommended a bunch of us go to the best sushi restaurant he ever tasted on the last day of school; as we ate there, the rest of us realized he had just unfortunately never been to an actually good sushi restaurant in our city. Either that, or his tongue actually couldn't tell the difference the way a tone-deaf person is incapable of hitting the right notes.
I'm not trying to be condescending when I say certain people lack a good frame of reference. It's not their fault. It is what it is. I'm sorry for not being able to figure out a different way to say it.
If your guy was also a short silver-haired ex-Soviet guy who tells a lot of questionable jokes and works for NASA, that's a heck of a coincidence.
That and most of these family owned restaurants just don't have the headroom to try challenging their clientele, so they stick to what's tried and true with their local diners. They have to keep the prices low and the food broadly palatable to unadventurous eaters.