For example, pad thai should be balanced between sweet, sour, and salty. Indian dishes don’t have meat as the feature in a dish but rather it’s added for some texture; the dish itself is the feature. Hunan cooking is dry and hot and often sour and differs from Sichuan cooking which it’s often compared against. Generally speaking in Asian cuisines, if you don’t cook the spices exactly correctly, it will change the taste of the dish quite a bit.
As a francophone, i can say that french-based cooking is an art as the ingredients are traditional basics that are in season. The food should be delicate or have a cut (e.g. a creamy cheese should have something acidic to cut it like a nice wine). It is the combination of the techniques (method of cutting ingredients like julienne style or method of cooking like flambee, saute, etc.) to create the dish.
Just wanted to note that Indian cuisine is as varied as cuisines from China or many other countries. My wife is Goan, and her family loves meat, especially pork. Their dinners are very meat or fish centric.
Korean cuisine tends to be salty, hot, sour and/or sweet. Something like jjimdak is primarily salty and sweet, maybe with a bit of heat. Kimchi is of course sour and hot.
