Australia's relationship to Italian food certainly has come a long way from the time when cappuccinos were seen as exotic. After all it was an Italian staple — pasta — that flew off supermarket shelves as lockdowns struck. But is Italy's culinary ubiquity its own kind of curse? What assumptions do we now make about this cuisine? Ahead of her Italian-inspired end of summer feast for this year's Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, chef, author, and Italophile Julia Busuttil Nishimura joins Blueprint for an Italian culinary refresher.