I don't have time to read through all the verbiage here. But the question seems to be: Why are there no celebrity chefs we can all obsess over in or from Italy? That question has been tortured here with 1000s of words, and is really a replay of the "why French food is far and away the greatest" thread. I have nothing to add to it. All of that said, to declare that Italian cooking has scant bearing on "modern cuisine" seems quite absurd to me. At least here in the US, Italian essentials like pasta, olive oil, and even pizza (Wolfgang Puck?) are nearly ubiquitous in fine-dining restaurants. Ingredients like sun-dried tomatoes and polenta come in and out of style (they'll be back). Techniques, particularly for vegetables, are hard-wired into every cook. The CIA in NY sees fit to run an Italian cooking center. Cutting-edge cooks may not be running out to buy the latest Hazan, but they've damn sure devoured and assimilated her Essentials of Classical Italian Cooking. And many of the books brought out by trendy foam enthusiasts will be bought, perhaps read, and often unassimilated. Like Flaubert in his books and God in his universe, Italian cooking is everywhere and nowhere in modern cuisine. To ignore the "everywhere" risks a plunge into that high-blown brand of philistinism that flourishes among some Francophiles: the kind that holds that since France is great, everywhere else is somehow second-rate or derivative. Present company excepted, of course.
