I recall reading the definition of the Italian Cuisine as "Cooking with whatever you have at hand" somewhere. Their stuff is good because they use top quality ingredients, it's not about some weird trick or ancient technique.

They take pride in producing and obtaining the good quality ingredients and I see Italians conservatively sticking to the basics.

On the other hand, in other countries where the produce quality is not exactly on the level of the ones in Italy, they tend to experiment with different techniques or ingredients. I would say that often the succeed in coming up with good combinations.