So … in your book … French restaurants (anywhere) need to have French origin chefs, Italian restaurants Italian chefs, etc etc etc … … ???
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I think sometimes people have a tendency to make a special case for Japanese food by Japanese chefs in Toronto, but are more okay with Japanese chefs cooking French food in Toronto (I’m thinking of Maison T and Mogette), and okay with Chinese chefs and Japanese chefs running Michelin starred Italian or French restaurants in NYC, Hong Kong, or anywhere else.
There are so many cases in Toronto of someone who is not Italian (Alida Soloman , the NZ guy from Zucca) serving top notch Italian food. Or the South Asian fellows at Geste and the Japanese trained Korean pastry chef at Bricolage making excellent croissants. The pastry chef at Bricolage also makes a nice pretzel bread, as good as I would find in Munich.
It’s funny how sometimes people are fussy about the ethnic or cultural background of the chef or kitchen staff, and sometimes they aren’t.
Of course people of any background can prepare top notch food and go through the same rigorous training as someone from the culture or ethnic group tied to the food.
At the same time, I am guilty of the same logic or bias at times, when it comes to Greek food made by non-Greeks in Toronto. I don’t post about it often. Some of the Greekish desserts at Mamakas, invented by non Greek pastry chefs who don’t have a general knowledge of which Greek desserts already exist, “inventing” new Greek desserts which are already a thing in Greece. That irritates me. But that is a failure of the education system or knowledge base of the pastry chef or consulting chef, not necessarily reflecting the training or the skills the chef has genetically (that’s a joke) and/or from George Brown/ the Stratford Chefs School. There is no reason someone who isn’t Greek can’t get the proportion of oregano to lemon right, or can’t get the Galaktoboureko right. They don’t have the right recipe, don’t have a vast knowledge of the cuisine they’re cooking,.don’t have the skills, or haven’t been taught.
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Points taken my friend!
FYI, I was just trying to make a point and pass on some out-dated news pertaining to the ’ brave ’ opening of Sushi Gin ( run by a trio of young non-Japanese guys ) directly across the road from Sushi Taki…an authentic Sushi-Ya operated by a Japanese chef of 30 years and front-of-house served by Japanese speaking ladies in Kimono.
For their Omakase offering, both served ingredients, otsumami and number of courses, that are pretty similar to each other. Sushi Gin, featuring more gimmicky presentation, charged $50 more …which IMO involved deploying some deceptive ‘smoke screen’ strategy and cannot be justified.
For me, entering a sushi-ya and being greeted with English then Cantonese versus Japanese and English, somehow just doesn’t seem right?! ( except, in your case, Shoushin! Ha! 
)
Hahaha, no need for Cantonese! All of them are fluent in Japanese and English
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For those of us who have been eating long enough know it’s not about the celebrity or ethnicity but about the consistency. As Bourdain noted, it’s the Mexican and South Asian line cooks that seem to have the taste palate to be able to consistently duplicate what the chef wants. Go to your top French and Italian restaurants in Toronto. The real cooks aren’t French nor Italian. But they have the taste vocabulary to duplicate what the "celebrated: French or Italian chef intended. That’s what matters in the end. Because if the line cooks can’t taste worth shit then the whole menu is a hit or miss. Case and point: Ardo is great. Bar Ardo is shit. Same executive chef.
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Similarly, Bar Koukla serves much worse food than Mamakas.
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Good Canadian boy Jon Klip did the training in Japan. Creates magnificent works of art. I don’t hear him being discussed on this site.
Here’s what I think. We now have a glut of tasting menu-only Japanese restaurants. To me, there is nothing less authentic than extorting high sums of money from people who have no relationship with the chef. That defeats the very essence of omakase.
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If it is true that ethnicity is a necessary precondition for authenticity, then it must also be true that a 2nd generation Canadian-born Chinese trained at George Brown can open an authentic Chinese restaurant, but a Caucasian born in China & trained at the Chinese Culinary Institute opening the same cannot be authentic.
This is a nonstarter. It intuitively makes no sense.
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Hear here. Racism has no place.
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