I like to answer to food treads, being Italian, doing food tour and because I'm studying history of food during lockdown.
Butter+cheese on pasta was probably the oldest way to eat pasta like we do now. In the Middleage pasta was only a side (boiled in broth) for other preparation, usually roasted meat. For rich people, of course. Normal people cannot often eat meat, so they eat only pasta, boiled in water and dressed with butter and cheese. Boccaccio in his Decameron wrote about the Bengodi (the land where everything is wealthy and goodness) that there was a mountain of Parmesan cheese and on the top cookers whom boil pasta and the pasta rolled along the mountain sides being soaked with the cheese.
The same dressing for pasta was used even in the abstinence periods (Friday, Wednesday, Lent....). People cannot eat meat, so pasta with butter was a good and suitable thing to be eaten. From the XIV century where recorder in recipe books even tools to eat the pasta with butter: at the beginning only sticks, later forks.
Before the use of fork everything was eaten only by hands, maybe with the help of bread. Imagine a meal where you eat hot pasta soaked of butter only with hands! Probably forks where invented for that use.
That answer even to the habit to eat things using the bread as tools: it survived in some tradition (like "fare la scarpetta"), in some European regions (like Carlos says), or in some culture (like in northern Africa to eat cous-cous). 8 centuries ago was normal everywhere in the World (except China, where they used sticks)!
About Spaghetti alla bolognese the last book of Massimo Montanari "Bologna, l'Italia in tavola" (in Italian, but greatly recommend) helps a lot to define the history of this dish. First appears in Turin and was called "Napolitan spaghetti alla Bolognese". Was the end of XIX century, when the Bologna's ragĂą start to became famous.
Was the period after Italian unification, when recipes where created mixing element of different areas of Italy. Is not a traditional dish of Bologna, but is for sure a traditional Italian dish. Probably the name is misleading, because seems a reference to a city where wasn't invented, but we have a lot of examples is the Italian tradition: "English soup" or "Russian salad", as to say the most famous!
About the original article. Well.... to be honest... is a little too much sentimental in my opinion (like the red and white tablecloth and waiter with moustache, as you say!).
Keep it fresh? I believe the 60% of Italians don't know about seasonality of a product. Less to say about freshness, when the most of Italian vegetables and fruits are harvested not ripe and stored in refrigerators for weeks or months. But is true that in street market often you find better products: better is purchase directly on the streets from the farmer.
Courses: in an official meals yes, there are several ones in the right order. At home in a daily meal often you eat only "first" or "second" and a piece of cake. Maybe a little of charcuterie or cheese.
Bread etiquette: that one is wrong, really. Bread should be eaten with everything in Italian tradition. Yes: even with pasta! In fact in Italian we dived the food in two groups: "pane e companatico" = bread and whatever else you eat with it. This is cultural from Mediterranean area: bread is life and is what made mankind. So nobody claim if you eat bread before lunch (in fact in all Italian restaurant the waiter serve you a big basket full of different kind of breads when you sit down), shovel the sauce, eat it with meat of fish and maybe even a little bit with a sweat cream or chocolate.
Olive oil: even this topic isn't completely true. We use different kind of "fats" to cook or dress. Olive oil (extra vergine, of course), seeds oil, butter, lard... It depends by the area of Italy and the recipe.
