Escaping spaces in PowerShell [duplicate]

I don't understand why in some cases it's ok to have spaces in parameters and in some cases it's not.

In this example it's ok to have spaces in $file variable, but not in $path.

$file = "test file.tar"
$path = "a b\"
New-Item -Path $path -Type Directory
# Make an empty tar file
tar -cf $file -T NUL
# extract it to $path
tar -xf $file -C $path

Gives you

tar.exe: could not chdir to 'a b"'

And most bizarre

tar -xf $file -C `"$path

works just fine.

I'm on Windows 11 and using the default PowerShell 5.1.