Well, if you would survey the Italian and French restaurants in other parts of Europe, I'm not sure the majority of them would be run by ethnic Italians/French, and I'm pretty sure nobody cares if the food is good.

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.

Brand appeal and self-selection are exactly what are happening there. The owner of our favorite Italian restaurant was talking to us and always used phrases like "in my home country" until we got to know him really well and he confessed he was Albanian (and funnily enough made all of his Albanian employees take Italian classes).

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.

Dunno why people care so much about the ancestry of the owner. I've had good sushi from Korean owners, and good Pho from Chinese restauranteurs.

Cooking takes experience and effort, not some weird genetic memory.

Cooking also requires specific ingredients, and someone who knows what mozzarella is and how should taste would probably have less problems to source it (or find an "acceptable" local product) when preparing Pizza in Alaska or Tokyo or Oslo...

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.

Well, sushi is also a big thing in Korea -- Japanese influence and all that. And if we wanna just explore say, raw seafood dishes, I'd argue Korean cuisine has a lot more variety. If you ever get the chance, do visit Busan for some amazing seafood.

Source: currently live in Tokyo, have also lived in Korea (Seoul) for years, and I eat everything.

My guess would be that, growing up in the culture you would be expected to have a better knowledge of what constitutes good food for your culture,moreso than having learned how to cook, say, Italian food from a cookbook.

I had an Iraqi neighbour that operated a small pizza joint, in Berlin. The hut was painted in the colors of the italian flag. They looked italian enough, with their mustaches and all, that the germans didn’t distinguish them, unless they would listen in carefully.

I am Italian, and I don't care about the language part, but I am pretty sure that in a blind test with the Berlin Pizza vs a pizza prepared in Italy by a decent Pizza joint I would be able to discern which is which with a good degree of accuracy.

Is unmasking a thing? What happens when it occurs? Here in the Netherlands I don’t think there is really a strong correlation between cuisine and genetics of the owners, and the food is fine.

It's not much a matter of genetics: it's just that - just to give you two examples of things I have lots of experience with - when we are talking of "Pizza" and "Espresso" a person who grew up (and learned to prepare food) in Italy or at least in an Italian family will have a different idea about how these things are prepared (or should taste when prepared). Do I think that, for example, Pizza Hut pizza is rubbish? No, I like it, and it definitely has a place in the world, but it's not what we mean with "pizza" in Italy. Do I think that Espresso prepared in 99.999% of the coffee shops/cafes/bistrots in the rest of the world is rubbish? Yes, most definitely.

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.

Nobody cares, as long as it's not an Italian restaurant