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.