Of course, "traditional" Italian cuisine gets much of its sweetness from tomatoes introduced from the Americas.

Right! I often marvel at what Old-world cuisine was like before American influences. No tomatoes. No potatoes. No chocolate OR vanilla. Heck, no tobacco or coffee! What did they do after dinner?

Coffee is from the old world. It's native to Ethiopia.

Wow! That's news to me, thanks. I wonder if Ethiopia still has any old lineages of coffee growing...

Ethiopian Yirgacheffe is a pretty famous coffee. http://www.blackpowderroasting.com/all-about-ethiopian-yirga...

If you're looking for a wormhole to fall into this afternoon, here you go:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange

Don't forget to add corn, bell/chili peppers, pineapples and a bunch of nuts to your list of things that were introduced to the Old World.

It works both ways too. Horses, chickens and pigs aren't native to the Americas... and a whole range of diseases...

Latin American influences.

Drink tea (from the Orient, of course...)

;)

Traditional Italian also gets a lot of its umami from tomatoes and grated Parmesan or Grana Padano cheeses.

I was surprised to learn chilli flakes are a popular spice in Italian cooking from Italy (even Italian grandmothers use them).

They are almost never found in Italian-American cooking except in certain dishes like Arrabiata. Most of my Italian-American friends can't handle any amount of spice.

Italian sausage, eggs in hell, meatballs, spicy pepperoni dishes & spicy vodka sauces are Italian American cooking.

I’m not sure that I’ve been to an Italian American restaurant, including chains, in the last 30 years that didn’t have spicy food on the menu.

Good point. What about in pasta? If you're in Florence, most pastas are sprinkled with chilli flakes.

Not pasta, but red chili flakes are a ubiquitous condiment in US pizzerias.

A huge factor is what your used to. If you regularly consume sweet things you get used to that flavor and stuff tastes bland without it.

On the other hand, if you eat a rather bland diet you start noticing many starches taste sweet as your saliva breaks them down.

> What the conversation boiled down-to- are foods that use 'all the cheat codes', ie, adding sugar, salts, fats, acid; going to taste better than foods that are traditional?

This is one of those unquantifiable sentiments that will just devolve into one person's personal biases against another's. What counts as a "cheat code"? What is the definition of "traditional"? In fact, the rest of your post belies a bias against American food and American interpretations of non-American food.

In fact, three of your "cheat codes" (salt, fat, and acid) are fundamental elements of cooking world-wide. The differences are in how those elements are brought, figuratively and literally, to the table by various cultures.

You should try some traditional, West coast, native American food. I'm talking some salmon-with-nothing-on-it, maybe some of that black moss (edit: wila) soup, some bitterroot. Try and find the salt, fat, and acid.

Salmon is quite fatty, no?

>I contest that American-Italian will taste better than Italian because it wins the Pepsi Taste Challenge. Where tradition doesnt allow you to use sugar in traditional Italian culture, American food has no rules.

Yeah, thanks god the Michelin guide is European...

I've learned that the Michelin Guide tends to be a bit Euro-centric and the top percentile of its ranked restaurants tends to incorporate elements of molecular gastronomy (the new hotness these days), which isn't everyone's cup of tea.

I ate a Michelin restaurant in San Sebastian (Basque Country) a few weeks ago. New Basque Cuisine is heavily reliant on fresh ingredients, which is its hallmark, but this restaurant also tried to present its dishes using molecular gastronomy inspired techniques (i.e. foam of sea water, etc.).

It was such a heavily cerebral experience (trying to figure out what I was supposed to be tasting etc.) that I had no more energy to simply enjoy the food on an emotional level. In that sense, I think Michelin restaurants miss the mark.

I learned that I'm more interested in food that people miss when they move away. I'm thinking of Brazilian stews like moqueca de peixe (fish stew), bobo de camarao (shrimp stew) or even feijoada (pork and beans with rice). These are simple every day foods that are enjoyable on a visceral level, and that one thinks about wistfully when one is abroad. I don't think I could ever miss food from a Michelin restaurant.

No offense but if you can say that ‘American Italian vs Italian’ comment with a straight face you need to travel more. Food is a lot more complex than how you’re describing it. Yes, you can have good Italian food anywhere in the world (my favorite is Lenzi, which is in Bangkok) but there’s no comparison to eating good Italian food in, say, Florence. I’m typing this looking at the river Arno. Eating Italian food here is transcendent.

I dunno. I had Panang curry in Thailand and it tasted exactly the same.

Thai food has all kinds of influences and changes as much as American food.

I was in Bangkok last year and Thai food there was amazing. Unlike American Thai food, it was savory rather than sweet, and had a kind of oomph that I've not experienced anywhere in the U.S. outside of San Francisco (Thai food in SF is pretty good).

American Thai food is trending sweeter by the year and getting less and less edible [1] for people without a sweet tooth like me.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/six-rul...