If you read ‘Kitchen Confidential’ by the boisterous Antony Bourdain, he explains that his personal preference for cooks were from Eucador because they don’t miss work, their food is consistent and they don’t talk back. Of course this led to him having to learn a bit of Spanish in order to get the cooking done in his French restaurant, but he admits it’s a lot of fun (for him, anyways…)

It doesn’t matter what ethnicity the cook is. So long as his food is good, what more do you need?

I do ask that if you say that if you’re running a Japanese restaurant, you actually serve Japanese food and actually know what Japanese food is. Finally, never, EVER, try to fool your customer.

One Japanese restaurant I went to took an hour to get me a simple sashimi dish because the waitress didn’t know what sashimi was. Apparently she thought it was a fried dish so she kept giving my order to the line chefs in back, instead of the sushi chef. The manager profusely apologized for that, and gave me the meal for free.

Another so-called Japanese place tried serving me bul gol gi, while claiming it was a chicken teriyaki bowl. Bul gol gi is a Korean beef dish btw… Yeah, turns out the chef was Korean. Worse still, he figured I (a caucasian) wouldn’t know the difference…in a city heavily populated by Asian restaurants of all types. Unfortunately, not only do I know the difference between Korean and Japanese cuisine, but I also know the difference between chicken and beef. The real tragedy was that if the place just said it was a Korean restaurant, they would still be in business. But trying to pass Korean food off as Japanese food in an area like that? Bad, bad idea.

Yet another place claimed to have never heard of katsudonburi, which is a fried pork cutlet that’s sliced, then tossed with some onions and a soy sauce mixture before being served over a bowl of rice. They had other doburis, and they also served the pork cutlet as a dinner, yet the chef refused to believe that someone would actually put the two items together despite his decades of training in Japan…yet he couldn’t speak any Japanese…or English for that matter.

At the same time, one of my favorite sushi places is run by a nice Chinese couple, and the Ranch 99 (Chinese grocery chain) largely employs Mexican and Hispanic people to run their registers. They can even speak a little Chinese. Hey, if you can do your job well, what does it matter what your ethnicity is?
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If the food is good, people will vote with their wallet.
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And if they are running a Japanese restaurant, they should know typical Japanese foods: soba, udon, tempura, sushi, etc
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married a Japanese