"you keep using that word. i do not think it means what you think it means."

To anyone who’s ever looked up a non-Western restaurant on Yelp and felt slightly perturbed by Joe Schmoe crediting his apparent expertise on dim sum authenticity to the 48 hours he spent in Hong Kong in 2003, this master’s students thesis on how Yelp reviewers’ use of ‘authenticity’ is yup, racist will speak to you:

When reviewers picture authenticity in ethnic food, they mentally reference all the experiences they’ve had before with that cuisine and the people who make it — and most of the time, reviewers view those experiences, whether from personal interaction or from interacting with media, as not positive …

According to my data, the average Yelp reviewer connotes “authentic” with characteristics such as dirt floors, plastic stools, and other patrons who are non-white when reviewing non-European restaurants. This happens approximately 85 percent of the time. But when talking about cuisines from Europe, the word “authentic” instead gets associated with more positive characteristics.

Tl;dr, guys, hold the white supremacy and just tell us whether the hand-pulled noodles are dece or not, okay??