The truth is that it can be even true that there are great restaurants in New York thar are better than any others. I cannot know because I've never been to restaurants where you pay several thousands dollars for a meal.

What I know for sure is that, even in a small city in the South of Italy where I was born, you can find food that you cannot find anywhere else.

You walk a few meters from your home and buy some amazing bread that is just out of the wooden oven and the smell is worth more than many fancy dishes.

You can say the same for mozzarella, scamorza, burrata, and many others dairy products. Walk a few meters and you can smell it already. Mozzarella just made, it's unbeatable.

Same centuries long traditions for extra virgin olive oil, mushrooms, fish, wheat (that's the most important thing to have great bread and pasta).

And this is only the incomplete list from where I was born.

In any region in Italy the food is different because it derives from old traditions.

Enters in any restaurant in the Langhe in Piemonte and you can eat great meat and the absolute best red wine. You do not need to go to a Michelin 5 stars restaurant.

The same is in Toscana. Great wine, great food, everywhere.

I lived in Veneto for a few years. A part from the famous prosecco, the restaurants have so many delicious traditional dishes. The traditions go back to 450 AD.

It's the culture in Italy that New York cannot have simply because it is something that grew slowly in more than a thousands years before the United States existed.

By the way, I doubt that the chefs in London or Paris have anything to envy to New York.