Agreed the stuff they sell as "Italian" here are crap. I went to Italy last summer to visit family and of course, the food was incredible.
But Italians didn't really teach the world how to eat. First of all Italy wasn't even a unified country until 1861. If you try a typical northern Italian dish like I did when I was in Bassano, then you try a typical southern Italian dish in Naples, let me tell you, there is a huge difference. Italian cuisine is not at all the same throughout the regions. The further south you go like to the Campania region or Calabria region, there is alot of seafood. The most famous type of Italian cuisine is of course from Bologna and Tuscany. You can of course add Naples, King of Pizza.