I think the culinary differences from the USA to another country like China are mostly about history. The Chinese have had a much longer tradition of celebrating and appreciating their chefs while Americans seem to prefer to put a blindfold on and act like animals arent killed for food and chefs like to spit in your meal. Because of our lust for 'mass-market' we've created this tradition of cooks that make minimum wage right out of highschool and only count the seconds in between flips of a frozen hamburger patty. Turns out handcrafted burgers dont scale well.

The enjoyment you may get out of talking to a sushi chef or similar is this mutual respect that if the chef wants to talk to you about software, you are the professional and you've spent your life perfecting it. When you speak to a sushi chef, you expect the same level of competence to go into his food. In other countries often when you go out to eat you don't even know the name of the restaurant, or even care... When you make plans to go there you reference the restaurant by the name of the chef that works there. "Hey, I heard Chef Baca is working at Roberta's Pizza Joint, we should go". When you go to a sushi bar, you expect the chef to give you your sushi exactly how it's meant to be eaten. You dont ask for a side of ranch, or ketchup, which is kind of like walking into an art gallery and asking the artist if he can add some more red brush strokes to his painting because you really prefer it that way.

As an artist, or a chef, I would kindly ask you to leave and take your bowl of ketchup on the side with you.