The quest for 'authentic' food is often a way to avoid talking to actual people.
There is a version of food tourism that is really just colonialism with better photography. The traveller arrives, seeks out the 'real' version of a cuisine, takes a photograph, leaves. The locals who have been eating a slightly different version for twenty years are not part of the story.
Authentic food is not frozen in time. It is alive. It changes. A Serbian grandmother who adds a bit of Vegeta to her sarma is not corrupting the dish. She is cooking.