[honkhonkpants]

I think it's just the scale of the place. California is larger than Italy, in terms of area, although less populous. If you were going to say that the US has awful food, you can't cherry-pick Italy as your standard. It would only be fair if you lumped Italy together with Estonia and Ireland and took the average.

I've travelled a lot and I've never been to any place where there wasn't good food. The desire to cook and eat delicious food is universal, and the practice exists wherever there is enough wealth to support it.