Not to argue, but my wife and I had an unexpectedly nice experience on Mulberry St earlier this spring.
After having a tasty but small dinner at a well-reviewed place in Soho, we decided we wanted to stretch our legs and maybe have a follow-up snack. Being vaguely aware that if we headed east we’d maybe run into Chinatown, we walked in that direction. Turns out, Little Italy is there as well. We hit Mulberry St at probably the northern part of Little Italy, and on this first warm Friday of the year, it had a pleasantly Euro-touristy vibe to it. Pedestrian walk, lots of restaurants with seating on the street, sandwich boards, lights, and hosts earning their keep. We walked maybe a block before the combination of vibe, menu that seemed focused enough to not try to be all things to all people, and a host with an Italian accent giving the right amount of invitation lead us to sit down at a table (also, our tired legs, mild inebriation, and need to use the rest room played a part in making a quick decision for sure).
Anyway, we shared what turned out to be an ample salad of bitter greens and very tasty plate of gnocchi in tomato sauce, and had a great time people watching, taking in the warm air, and enjoying ourselves.
We have traveled to Italy numerous times, enjoy food, and have the palates and vocabulary to have articulated personal preferences as well as a sense of food and cultural context.
Was it an elevated, special plate of food that told the story of its own authenticity? Probably not. But, it was absolutely a serviceable and flavorful plate of food that was well executed, not particularly expensive, and delivered an experience of Italian cuisine well beyond what you might find for the same money at Olive Garden, or even plenty of local authentic Italian-American restaurants in Your Town USA.
tl;dr - I’m sure there are plenty of misses on Mulberry St, but my one experience was absolutely 100% better than Disney’s version of authentic regional cuisines. I also imagine that as most of the tourists in NYC speak English as their primary language, the crowds are a little less helpless than in places where hungry tourists also don’t speak/read the language well or at all. This probably tips the scales slightly towards even the bad places having to meet a higher bar than they do in Rome, for example.