Italians take their food seriously, and while many traditional recipes have been adapted to American tastes to great effect, sometimes non-Italian chefs miss the mark. Parmesan is a hallmark in many regional Italian cuisines, but that doesn't mean that every single dish should be liberally sprinkled with this cheese.

Strong cheeses like Parmigiano Reggiano work well with heavy pasta or meat dishes like ragù, but parmesan masks and clashes with the delicate flavors of seafood. It's usually a fine idea to sprinkle some parm on pasta dishes, but not on seafood pastas like linguine alle vongole, spaghetti allo scoglio, and gnocchi ai gamberi.

It's also not necessary to bury your food in parmesan at a nice Italian restaurant, as Rom restaurateur Raffaele Ruggiero explains. "Usually, when you have this kind of gastronomic experience, there's no need to add more cheese because the recipe has already been studied by the chefs," Ruggiero told Food & Wine.