With food politics, it is tempting to want to categorize dishes as your own, especially as a second- or third-generation Asian American. Growing up in southern California, 20 minutes from Orange county’s famous Little Saigon district, I was raised on phở restaurants with linoleum floors, Formica tables and servers who openly chided my weak accent. You can’t get more Vietnamese than that, and I took pride in it.

Later, as a college student in New York, I started work at a phở restaurant in Greenwich Village. I applied to the job, where I still work today, in part because I wanted to be a starving artist without actually starving, but also because I thought it would connect me to a Vietnamese community that was otherwise difficult to find in New York, where there is only a small Vietnamese population.

On my first day of work, I clocked in to discover that almost all the workers were Chinese or Latinx. There was not much of an ethnic connection, but I stayed anyway and was trained by the two owners, a pair of half-Vietnamese, half-Chinese men who had gentrified the menu for the Greenwich locals and college students. Fish sauce was generously renamed “Vietnamese chili,” and pig’s feet became “spicy pork knuckles”.

The owners were meticulous about decor, and invested in photogenic placemats, a stoop covered in florals and palm leaves, and a bar framed with painted army helmets and a neon “noodle” sign. “Introduce yourself to customers and check up on your tables,” they told me. “This isn’t Chinatown.”

I’ve served thousands of people since my first day, and have read every Yelp and Google review. Because of our English menu and appeal to customers who eat with their eyes, our lowest ratings often describe us as “trendy,” “white-washed” and “inauthentic”. Vietnamese customers, especially out-of-towners from areas with large populations of Vietnamese, such as San Jose or Houston, delight in asking if our owners are Chinese (we are trained to say no), ordering in Vietnamese to Cantonese servers, and remarking loudly, “Only two basil leaves?” “The beef is already cooked?” “We should open our own Vietnamese restaurant.”

Our head cook is half-Vietnamese, and we often tell customers about how he grew up in Saigon as the first line of defense when people say we aren’t Vietnamese enough. As the only full Vietnamese, I’ll be sent to Vietnamese customers to drop a few xin chàos and cảm ơn anhs, even though we shouldn’t have anything to prove. French, Italian and other European restaurants are rarely held to the same standards of authenticity, so why do minority cultures, and particularly Asians, cling to traditional food so tightly?

The 20th century saw a wave of Asian immigrants who opened restaurants as a means of survival, a ready money source even if you couldn’t speak English. In recent years, Asian Americans have been entering the restaurant business or innovating their parents’ stores because of culinary ambitions, or to uphold a family history, rather than because it is their only option. Like their parents or grandparents, they are businesspeople; although passionate about their culture’s heritage, they are less interested in one singular way to cook. Yet their biggest critics are often other Asian Americans, who want food they can have authority over, claim as their own and use to bolster their identity credibility – even though authenticity is difficult to pin down and impossible to quantify.

It’s fine and admirable to open a restaurant with altruistic goals for its impact on community and culture. But many restaurants are still mainly a means to feed one’s family and the employees on payroll. Yes, our restaurant caters to American tastes and is designed around American ideas of Vietnam, but we’re also the most frequented phở joint in the area, and we’re helping introduce more people to Vietnamese food as well as pay our bills.

When 10lb-bowls of phở and phở burritos went viral, I was a bit pained to see a Vietnamese staple turned into what I deemed a business gimmick, and mixed with a different cuisine at that. But recipes aren’t stagnant, and neither is culture. Vestiges of French colonization are abundant in Vietnamese food, from Café du Monde coffee to bành mì baguettes, but these are now considered inherently Vietnamese, even as we distance ourselves from an imperialist past.

I’m no less Vietnamese because I’ll enjoy an “inauthentic” vegan phở, or a bánh mì made by a Senegalese cook. There is no such thing as authentic food. Eat what you want, and enjoy it. There are more important hills to die on.