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Comment by epolanski | Hacker News Reader

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That depends on what your definition of authentic is. If it means ingredients sourced from their host countries, then that's going to make it extremely hard for any restaurant to start; considering the logistical cost and generally things not being fresh enough. The appropriate definition should be authentic methods. If I want to cook dum biryani and market it as dum biryani, I should be cooking it in the traditional method of using a bread sealed handi; but calling it unauthentic if my chicken wasn't born in Hyderabad makes no sense.

That attitude isn’t invited to the dinner party.

One of the best things about meeting people in person is that no one is rude enough to make this kind of comment to your face. Unfortunately the internet removes that barrier.

Your comment is confusing rudeness with your ignorance of how foreigners feel about food in their host countries vs at home. His comment is not any different than what my Indian and Chinese friends say.

No, you are missing the point. Saying the OP’s comment, as stated, is just rude and socially inappropriate. In person, it would come off as being standoffish, nitpicky, and hostile. It’s not a good way to make friends and influence people.

This doesn’t exist online, where it’s acceptable to post “drive by” snarky putdowns that add nothing to the conversation and don’t actually address the issue at hand - in this case, the difficulty of sourcing ingredients.

A constructive comment would have asked about the difficulty of sourcing obscure ingredients and how the founder deals with that.

I am not missing the point. The person is giving an actual answer from his own lived experience and you are saying they are rude for it. I encourage you to expand your network of foreign friends so you can ask them about the food here vs at home. They will almost certainly say the exact same thing. The tase and the smell of the food here even if they make it will not have the same taste and smell back home.

I have a huge network of foreign friends and have lived abroad for the last decade.

Again; you are missing the point. It has nothing to do with whether the food is “authentic” or not, which is itself a highly debatable question. It has everything to do with the way you communicate to people when disagreeing with them or criticizing their ideas.

If you don’t care that people will immediately think you’re a pedantic, difficult person, as long as you get to be “right”, then sure, feel free to disregard what I wrote.

Have you asked them about the food here vs. back home? Will you return here when they tell you the food tastes different just like what the person said?

The guy said two sentences. You may think it's rude but it's probably the language barrier and he's just trying to give his honest perspective and there was no rudeness intended.

"The food tastes a little different" != "The food is entirely inauthentic"

Authenticity, in other words, is not an absolute. It's a spectrum, and you can get pretty darn close to the "authentic" end of said spectrum without needing to literally import foreign water.

I have lots of foreign coworkers and enjoy going to restaurants we find. No one sits there and complains about how this doesn’t taste exactly right so what’s the point in trying something new.

It's a spectrum and OP offers to get closer to one end of the spectrum when it comes to authenticity. What's the fuss about?

Edit: dishes authentic to a region cooked as close to authentic as the chef and ingredients allow.

If you live in a metropolitan area, finding them in local niche shops tends to not be overly difficult. Not to mention that it's possible to import as well.

It's strange how you are being downvoted when my foreign friends say the exact same thing. They say that the food at the restaurants we go to have a different smell from the food back home.

Maybe when your friends travel, they change too.

The other possibility- that the climate and soil are different- is too absurd?

Your friends say "the Chinese food in America doesn't taste the same as the food back at home"?

Or your friend interrupts a restaurant owner - a restaurant they've never eaten at - and says "you call that 'authentic' food? I doubt it."

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