I really don’t like Italian restaurants because the idea of a dinner being composed of a huge plate of pasta with bread sticks and a salad does not make a satisfactory meal, in my opinion. I like pasta dishes, but I really don’t want that much of any one thing, no matter how good. I like variety. For that reason I prefer buffets. I’m much more satisfied in standard restaurants where the dinner plate comes with the entre and several vegetables. Of course, I have to have some kind of potato. That probably is my Irish ancestry.
I am Italian and I have also had the chance in my life to experience directly lots of other cuisines. I am naturally inclined to try and experiment therefor I have always seized the chance to taste whatever I stumbled upon and this allowed me to be convinced that hardly no cuisine lacks something worth mentioning. Most things that make exotic cuisines theoretically disgusting are in fact just disgusting on paper, but once one overcomes the instinctive sense of repulsion on eating -say- bugs and slimy things, a pleasant surprise is often about to reveal.
That said, I nevertheless think that Italian cuisine is just better than the rest, not because it is my own, but because given that any cuisine has its array of high level courses great in flavor and taste (some of which might even compete and win against Italian courses), Italian cuisine offers a variety and abundance of high level courses and food products that one can never live enough to taste everything. Of course Italy, as well as other Mediterranean countries, has the fortune of being in a geographical position that gives us so many products to work with (and I mean for centuries, even before the recent globalization).
Also Italy, although being a united country since just the middle 1800’s has its culture rooted in a millennia long story of a civilization that didn’t just stayed there put but received inputs and influences by a so great and varied plethora of other cultures that very few had the fortune to have. Finally, it seems that the generations of inhabitants of this land had a penchant for making a lifestyle out of food, from the poorest resources to the richest (think that extra virgin olive oil is a staple here).
Now, considering all that, I have to tell you Doug that the idea you have of the typical Italian meal you can have in a restaurant is somehow deranged from reality, probably because your local Italian restaurants are (and it is likely so) accustomed to local tastes and expectations. Breadsticks for instance are just something you find on a table when you arrive and you eat while you wait for your order to arrive. I have never seen in my entire life breadsticks or any other breadlike thing in a a normal course of pasta (of course there are exceptions with crusted bread crumbs and other bready stuff in first courses but we’re going into a more advanced level) except in foreign restaurants.
Here in Italy we would laugh in finding bread on a course of pasta like they do abroad. 
When you go to a restaurant, you usually have a full Italian meal which is usually made of appetizers (sampling of salami and cheeses and also bruschetta and several other little appetizers one can think of) then a first course (it can be anything from soups to all kinds of pasta to rice courses to things like lasagne etc.) followed by a second course (the meat or fish course which can itself be comprised of more that just a single thing) usually accompanied by a side dish of vegetables or potatoes or salads or other non meaty foods and finally fruit, a cake or something like that, caffè and ammazzacaffè (“coffee and coffeekiller” which is a nickname for a liquor of sorts, usually grappa or any other local spirit or liquor).
Once you have experienced a meal in full at a real Italian restaurant you can still be disappointed because maybe your taste isn’t there, but you certainly can’t complain about variety.
Of course Italians don’t eat a meal like that everyday, or at least the do it with minimal quantities (like a quarter of each course), and thus a lunch in Italy, consumed at home, might likely be a course of pasta with a salad or some other vegetable as a side dish or a typical dinner at home can be a small meat or fish course with a side dish of vegetables, but trust me on this, thinking this is representative of a whole cuisine is like when non-Americans think that all there is in American cuisine is burger and fries.
I happen to be a buffet fan too and I always eat too much there because I am one who has to eat at least one of everything (in every other meal too), but you should reconsider your choice of a restaurant if “a huge plate of pasta with bread sticks and a salad” is what they serve you as an Italian meal.
I would like to point out that I’m not defending my culinary heritage for some pricked Italian pride or anything like that (especially because your critique was against Italian restaurants in your area I guess, and not cuisine per se), it is just that I am very passionate about foods and discovering different cuisines, wherever they come from, and, although to a lesser extent and with far less direct expertise, I would have intervened as well for French cuisine (in spite of the everlasting feud) or Russian or Somalian or Argentinian or Indonesian and on and on.
Ciao. 
Not all Italians have been enthusiasts for pasta:
Well, the best way to eat in Italian restaurants is to eat in Italian restaurants located in Italy!
In Italy you won’t be served a meal which consists of only a large amount of pasta. IMO the correct way to serve pasta is to serve just a little bit less than what you want, so that when you’re done with the dish you kind of wish it wasn’t so small.
Then the restaurant should go on with serving the rest of the meal, which is not pasta.
And in Italy they do, as outlined above.
There are a few tricks for a good pasta meal, some of which are:
- Don’t overcook the pasta.
- Serving should be small enough so that the diner wish for some more.
- Then serve something else to complete the meal.
-Tor
(I like Italian cuisine and Italian wine. Used to work in Italy. I even lived there for a while. I love it.)
edit: Typo
I just went home to Pennsylvania and picked up my favorite salami and pepperoni. I’m on a search for the perfect salami.
While I was in Pennsylvania, I heard there is fake spaghetti. They call it impasta.
The problem I have with buffets stems from my childhood. Potluck was an event where I was told that it was an insult not to try someones dish. So now I go to a place that has a table with 40 different foods…
…but I am a person that would descend on a loaf of Challah bread and call it dinner.
ah, the US of A…we can trash anything
To be fair, the Chinese have wrecked pasta ever since Marco Polo planted the first ramen tree in that land’s soil.
I love potstickers and pot-atoes, potlucks not so much…
We prefer our pasta to be buckwheat rather than that wheat salmonella flour stuff.
Night shade family. Deadly, and the Norwegians make flat bread of it.
Lefse and lutefisk, now we’re talking!
Fantastic. One might have thought of Dali if Marinetti hadn’t actually taken himself so seriously, and possibly have even liked him for the kerfluffle (worldwide, even) that his anarchic attack on pasta caused had it proven to be the elaborate joke it really should have been. That might have been genius. Check out paragraphs 5 and 6 in the link above for a look into what can happen when you let a Futurist’s thinking turn cuisine into propaganda. “Grotesque” is not a bad word to describe the result, and it might have stood as better art were it not for the depressingly irresponsible political and philosophical nonsense behind it.
Me, I like pasta. You could bait Nano-traps with it and you’d bag me every time.
I doubt it. Nano-traps aren’t even big enough to bait with a grain of coucous let alone something big like risi. 
Try angel hair.
The trouble with Italian food is, two weeks later you’re hungry again…
I like precisely the kind of meal Doug is lamenting, except in that I want more salad/less pasta. The pasta is important, mind you, but I value salad with a nice Italian dressing pretty highly.
Still, I think mor.whistle makes an excellent point about Italian cuisine in general. Even in Baltimore’s famous Little Italy there are Italian restaurants of the heap o’pasta model, and those which aspire to represent a more balanced view of the region.
Hey ! Wasn’t he the same guy that planted those chap-chae bushes in Korea ?
With me + those Korean sweet-potato noodles, it’s more like 3 weeks ! (I still love it, though!) p.s. I sealed the airlock on my first round of Kimchi tonight . . . here’s hoping . . .
The imagery Italians cherish the most when they think about pasta is from a movie:
(click the pic for a clip) 
I have uncertain ideas of what you may refer to as “Italian” dressing, but, mainly, salads are just dressed with salt and olive oil and vinegar or freshly squeezed lemon juice for those who want a sour taste.
It is very rare to add anything else in salads for everyday usage, especially because a salad in Italy is almost always just a very small and light side dish.
Moreover, since we almost only use olive oil, there’s little need to mash other flavors on top of something that is already super itself.
Dressings with creamier stuff like yoghurts or mayonnaise are used in richer salads that fall in the category of “salad meals” that you eat, especially in the hot season and at lunch, instead of the usual.
But mind that even those richer salads rarely depart from the “salt and olive oil” based dressing. They just have more stuff in them like cubes of some cheese and or olives and or tuna fish and or cubes of ham and so on.
I like to imagine that I am a descendent of the person who invented Feta Cheese. I receive no royalties.
Are we to assume it is a feta accompli your claim is true?