Fresh ingredients are crucial for such dishes as basil pasta with scallop, veal with roasted fennel, and brodetto (a seafood stew).[Photo provided to China Daily]

"Fifty years ago in the US, tomato sauce would include tablespoons of sugar or an entire carrot, to eliminate the acidity of the tomatoes that were available then. Back home adding sugar to tomato sauce is just not done, but now, even though we have tomatoes in the US that are not all acid, the sugar is still added."

Carbonara with cream and pink vodka sauce with cream are other Americanizations that make him shudder. And putting spaghetti and meatballs on the same plate? "In Italy you go to jail for doing that!" he says with a laugh.

"That's why I teach classes on True Italian," he says, adding that his goals are modest.

"If I can change the minds of 12 people about Italian food, I will consider myself a success."

He's probably done better than that. Two Italian presidents have honored Potenza for being an ambassador of Italian culture, and his TV career includes winning the Food Network Guy's Grocery Game 2015. He loves to talk about regional wines: "We have great white wines from Abruzzo that even people in other parts of Italy don't know about."