Americans who are judgemental about the quality of Italian food in [random place] in Italy vs. [random neighborhood] in NYC is one of the funniest experiences I have in the USofA. A Decalogue to Americans who talk about Italian food: (1) Beauty is the eye of the beholder, i.e. you need to understand good food to judge good food, think about it (2) Netflix is the death of restaurants, if you are using Netflix-famous restaurants as your benchmark you are missing that those benchmarks were manufactured for you in the first place (3) Great Italian restaurants outside tourist cities don't take foreigners, gate-keeping them thru language like in Japan (4) Great Italian restaurants inside tourist cities don't like foreigners, gate-keeping them thru word of mouth reservations (5) Great Italian restaurants who like foreigners most probably also have a branch in NYC (6) Name dropping famous chefs is very cringe (7) If it has cream on it, it is typically not food (8) Truffle oil is not truffle, it is non-olive oil after a holiday in a Chinese container (9) Ingredients are everything, and good ingredients don't travel (10) No, it is not notorious in Italy that NYC has the best pizza in the world, in Italy people don't even know NYC has pizza Never trigger an Italian on food.