The Italians took noodles from the silk road, tomatoes from Columbus, and pretended to have culinary heritage.
So they invented fusion cuisine?

That’s just nonsense. Everything originally came from somewhere else, including humans themselves. Italians invented new uses for those two things and thus established a near-peerless culinary heritage.

Also, tomatoes were first brought to Europe by Spanish explorers. Please don’t give that genocidal monster any undue credit.

The History Of Tomatoes In Europe | Master Tomato

Those explorers just brought them over after Columbus showed them where the tomatoes were.