Italian cooking is very difficult to pin down. Almost every city and town has its specialties. The end result is a huge number of local cuisines rather than a single national cuisine.

 Pasta is the first course in a meal for most Italians with the exception of the far north where risotto or polenta is the norm. Italians are very particular when it comes to pasta. The perfectly prepared pasta should be al dente ("to the tooth") i.e. fully cooked but not overly soft. For an Armenian such pasta might feel a little undercooked though.

 You can tell a real Italian by the way he eats spaghetti – using only a fork. Other Europeans and Americans eat spaghetti dishes with a spoon and a fork.

 There are two ways to eat pasta: (1) a smaller pasta dish is served between the starter (antipasti) and the main dish; or (2) a larger plate of pasta can be served as a main dish.

 Carpaccio, named after a 15th century painter, was created for a customer whose doctor advised him to eat only raw meat. Today there are many variations of the dish made of sliced beef or fish fillet and dressed with balsamic vinegar and spices.

 Any Italian will tell you that cappuccino is a morning coffee. A real Italian would never order cappuccino in the afternoon or after a meal. But that doesn't discourage millions of non-Italians from drinking cappuccino throughout the day. We serve cappuccino with our home made biscotti – the almond cookie with nuts that has become world famous.

 A large meal is usually finished with a tiny but strong cup of espresso. Purists put nothing in espresso and will tell you that caffé amaro, bitter coffee, is the only way to go. Others like a bit of sugar. Another possibility, which is especially nice in the afternoon, is the caffé macchiato, an espresso that's spotted (macchiato means spotted or stained) with a dollop of milk foam from the pitcher that's heated for making cappuccino. Or some people add to their espresso a dash of grappa, cognac, or some other spirit - this is called a caffé corretto.

 Tiramisu means "pick-me-up" in Italian for its high energy content (eggs and sugar) and the caffeine of the strong espresso coffee. There are many different stories about the origin of Tiramisu. One legend is that the Venetian courtesans ate tiramisu as a "pick me up". Another story says that the female Venetian lace makers would take a break from work to eat tiramisu. In fact, tiramisu was born in the 1970s in the town of Treviso in north Italy. It was proposed for the first time in the restaurant "Le Beccherie". The dessert and its name became immediately extremely popular, and this cake and the name were copied by many restaurants first in Treviso then all around Italy.