Ryujin
Legend
Define "authentic".
Is the tomato sauce in your favorite "Italian" restaurant authentic? How could you tell? There are as many such sauces as there are authentically Italian people to cook them.
I am not so hot on people advertising their food as "authentic" without their having a solid grounding in the cuisine they're producing. If you are going to try to make trade off a culture, you should give the culture the respect of learning about it. But, if they only advertise it as being in the style (which is really the normal way this is presented) then I don't care.
I would define it as ethnic food, prepared by someone who either grew up in the culture or received some form of appropriate training in the cooking of said ethnic food (as in working under someone with the previously stated credentials), that is made with as close to the original ingredients as possible. I would say that the various regional East Indian dishes I was served, by the mothers of several East Indian girlfriends I had in my youth, would qualify for example.