Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Give us Italians some credit, please!
Mansi is not implying at all that you have to be Italian to do a proper pizza, he's just skeptical about someone (even a famous chef) deciding to start making pizza out of the blue.
In the original LA Times article it is said that the news "sent the Italian food blogosphere reeling" and quoted two Italian food blogs that "responded with resentment over a foreign celebrity chef trying to redo an Italian classic." I read those blogs and this is simply not true. All the concerns are about the possibility of a chef, famous for "molecular cuisine", trying to deconstruct pizza, which is being deconstructed enough already all over the world.
Italians simply don't care about the passport of the pizza makers or their parents, but about preserving the original concept of pizza, which is often undermined by many monstrosities, maybe excellent ones, that shouldn't be called pizza at all.
Cheese and Pears