Situation (Brief): How do I represent cultures better for my worldbuilding without sampling/doing cultural appropriation?

Hi all,

I'm a DM doing a online, streamed game.
I decided to build up a sub continent for my game to take place in since the players will be traveling all over it fighting monsters.
Right now is downtime and due to some time constraints, they have to stay in town, so I decided to bring the monster to them with a October-fest type celebration that'll turn into a big mech fight at the end - I promise it makes sense.

Here's the issue. I'm an American, Hebrew Woman who at most lived in Japan for 3 years and visited like 2-3 countries in South-East Asia. My friends are all American as well. I chose the region initially to shed some light on cultures there for my friends.
So, while I'm writing from some knowledge, I kept getting the feeling I'm doing what folk accused Critical Role of doing with Season 3, which was cultural appropriation. This is also where the streamed element comes into play, this'll be broadcasted and I don't want folk to feel I'm just stealing their culture.

The initial plan was for each fantasy race to have ties back to a regional culture - East Indian, Laosian, Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc - which has been established already and for them to each bring a meat dish, a vegetable dish, desert and an alcohol because they're celebrating their multi-cultural home in this city.
How do I properly do this?