I’m looking for answers.
There are "good even if you didn't grow up with it" dishes like lechon (suckling pig), pork & chicken adobo and halo-halo, and some of the modern/upscale/fusiony places in Manila are amazing, but it would still be hard to have a Filipino place that's authentic and appealing to non-Filipino palates at the same time.
Also every mentioned country commonly used fermented fish/shrimp paste. The smelly “pla ra” is part of som tam but restaurants in the west probably don’t offer it at all.
Phở is famous but bulalo (oxtail bone marrow soup) is not, yet the two are comparable. The latter has a large piece of oxtail that would make it a delicacy on its own, and it’s good-looking too.
With a set of base dishes that taste good and look good for westerners, I’m not sure the taste is what’s keeping Filipino cuisine a secret.
Ethiopian food is “common” in Los Angeles, but I wouldn’t say it’s particularly varied or spiced.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/paxadz/the-surprising-reason...
While surely every country and culture offers some tasty dishes I think there is a reason we see so many Italian, Thai and Japanese restaurants everywhere and so few German, Phillipine or Peruvian restaurants.
I am German myself and I am sure you can find more Italian than native restaurants in Germany, simply because it makes for a better dining experience. Not everything needs to be socially constructed.
I doubt that. Every eating place where you can get a bratwurst or a currywurst would count as a German restaurant as everyplace where you can get only pizza would count as Italian restaurant.
If we look at higher priced restaurants it gets fuzzy anyway as those restaurants in Europe are more influenced by French cuisine than the native ones and this wouldn't be any different in Germany or Italy as the influence of French culture was pretty dominant in the past centuries.
"Thailand, to combat bad Thai food around the world, creates robot ‘e-delicious’ tasting machine"
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191047-thailand-to-comba...
I also wonder if it has to do with segregation when arriving - if the Chinese on the railroad had to cook their own food it would be different than if they just ate whatever everyone else was eating.
Some cuisines have "brand appeal", some of it deserved, and that makes business sense for restaurant owners - and at least here in the far north, a chef's training includes the basics of the distinguished European traditions. Those who want to perfect it will obviously make the pilgrimage.
I'd like to think I would probably like his Albanian cuisine as well, but admitted to myself I probably wouldn't have tried it in the first place. People don't usually try out things for a nice evening they have no clue how it would taste like.
Cooking takes experience and effort, not some weird genetic memory.
Genetics has little to do with that, though: lots of ITALIAN pizzerias IN ITALY now hire Egyptian citizens to prepare and (most importantly) cook their pizzas. And nobody has any problem with the way the pizza comes out.
My point is: if you are in the place where a specific dish was "invented", you have access to appropriate ingredients and lots of know-how from the locals. If you grew up in a culture were the dish is available only through ethnic restaurants, proper ingredients might be difficult to find, and most importantly, your own taste (to judge if the food is "correct" or if one of the ingredients is "good enough") is somehow distorted because you are too far from the originals.
Source: currently live in Tokyo, have also lived in Korea (Seoul) for years, and I eat everything.
There are exceptions (I know of a place where they make excellent Espresso in Berlin, and neither the owner/store manager nor the baristas are of Italian descent) - but the rare times I had decent Espresso outside Italy itself it was almost invariably prepared by an Italian.
I suppose that this could apply to other specialties from different cultures: I am no Sushi snob for example, nor a Croissant Connoisseur... but I would expect that Sushi prepared by a Japanese chef, or French Pastry made by a French person could be a bit more faithful to the "platonic ideal" so to say.
Similarly, I've never heard of an Algerian restaurant. But Moroccan or Lebanese ones are quite common (and the relationships of France with Morocco and Lebanon much better and less contentious).