Italian Food V. Mexican Food

Its been my experience that the textural weirdness of Mexican food gets transmogrified into dull poot in the US, and I assume the same happens to Italian food. I've had Mexican food in Mexico, but I've yet to try Italian food in Italy. Until I taste the traditional originals in their normal context, no vote from me.

Pasta is the world's most boring food, it's boiled dull with a big dollop of dull thrown at it that requires grating cheese that smells like old socks in a attempt to lift it above dull to dull that smells of old socks. Pizza equally as dull, but with the added incentive of completely tasteless and overcooked "bread" to compliment a topping that you wouldn't put in a midweek sandwich unless you were desperately hungry and a cheese that has neither smell nor taste but is added for the sole reason that it melts nicely and goes stringy (for about five minutes and then it's just cold and oily blandness of indeterminate texture). Both pasta and pizza suffer from one overriding simularity that makes any meal a chore - the first mouthful tastes exactly the same as the last mouthful except it gets progressively colder as the meal progresses until by the last mouthful all you have is congealed lump of dull (on inedible bread in the case of pizza) - yum. The only advantage to pizza and pasta is that any fool can make it and its remarkably difficult to screw up ... many resturants (even in Italy) must put a lot of effort into making sure they do.

Like both, but far from equally...Italian food is just paradise.