What does it mean these days when you say you’ve eaten at an authentic _____ restaurant? We’ve eaten tacos and quesadillas at a joint run by Chinese guys. They even had the obilgatory fat, 
laughing Buddha in the corner. Lots of Japanese restaurants, especially those cheap sushi places, are actually run by Koreans and Chinese. One of our favorite Chinese restaurants in midtown has a Mexican chef and Mexican waiters.
Yesterday, we ate at a Thai restaurant called Phuket in Roxbury, MA. The food was cheap ($5.95 for massaman beef and tom yum soup). But this Thai
did not have the usual picture of King Bhumibol and there was not a single Thai word in the menu. In fact, the tom yum soup was called “hot sour soup”. Somehow, eating at a Thai restaurant, without the picture of Pres Fidel Ramos’s look-alike head of state, and without the laughing buddha surrounded by fruit and lights, is not quite authentic enough.
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