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Italy

The country where the sandwich is mostly a delivery system for one perfect ingredient: a single salume, a single cheese, a single regional bread, and the discipline not to add a second thing.

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The Italian sandwich is built on subtraction. Where other countries stack, the panino names one thing and gets out of its way: prosciutto di Parma and bread, mortadella and bread, a wedge of pecorino and bread. The catalog of 427 is really a catalog of Italian larders, region by region, each protected denomination getting its own treatment between two pieces of the local loaf.

The bread is itself a regional map. Romagna folds a piadina; Liguria splits a focaccia; Tuscany tears a schiacciata; Puglia hollows a puccia; the Veneto trims the crust off a soft tramezzino; Rome stuffs a triangular trapizzino; Palermo soaks a roll in spleen and lard. The filling changes by province and the bread changes with it, and the two are not interchangeable.

The categories below capture how the V5 catalog actually sorts. The largest by far are the salume panino and the cheese panino, the two halves of the Italian deli counter. Around them sit the regional flatbreads, the Veneto tramezzino, the Florentine offal roll, the Sicilian street fryer, and the long tail of place-named panini. Below the anchors, the full filterable catalog lets you browse every entry by name or category.

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The Tramezzino

The Venetian bar sandwich: crustless soft white bread, a domed bound filling, cut on the diagonal and stacked under glass with a glass of wine. · 38 sandwiches

The Piadina Romagnola

Romagna's thin unleavened griddle flatbread, folded hot around squacquerone, prosciutto, salame or greens. · 20 sandwiches

Focaccia

The Ligurian oiled flatbread split and filled, from the dimpled Genovese to the cheese-thin Recco and the tall oily Barese. · 14 sandwiches

Tigelle, Crescia & Gnocco Fritto

The Emilian and central Apennine breads split or fried for salumi: tigelle discs, gnocco fritto pillows, piadina's cousins crescia and borlengo. · 24 sandwiches

The Trapizzino

The modern Roman pocket: a triangle of pizza-bianca dough opened and filled with a spoonful of a classic Roman braise. · 8 sandwiches

Puccia & the Southern Flatbreads

The hollowed and crisp breads of the South and the islands: Salento's puccia, Sardinia's pane carasau, Puglia's frisella, the Calabrian pitta. · 16 sandwiches

Sicilian & Southern Street Food

Palermo and Naples on the street: pani câ meusa, panelle and crocchè, sfincione, the fried roll bought from a stall and eaten standing. · 14 sandwiches

Lampredotto & the Florentine Offal Roll

Florence's tripe stand: the fourth stomach simmered, sliced, the cut roll dunked in its broth and hit with salsa verde. · 7 sandwiches

Panino con Porchetta

The roast-pork panino of central Italy: deboned pig, herb-and-fennel stuffed, slow-roasted, sliced with its crackling onto plain bread. · 6 sandwiches

Mozzarella in Carrozza & the Italian Toast

The fried and the pressed cheese sandwich: mozzarella battered and fried in its carriage, and the bar toast of ham and cheese. · 6 sandwiches

Schiacciata & Pizza Bianca

The flat oven breads of Tuscany and Rome split for salumi: the olive-oil schiacciata, the blistered Roman pizza bianca, the grilled fettunta. · 12 sandwiches

Panino con Pesce & Conserve

The preserved-sea panino: tuna, bottarga, baccalà mantecato, Piedmontese and Ligurian anchovy, sardines in saor. · 12 sandwiches

Panino con Formaggio

Italy's cheese counter between bread: Parmigiano and pecorino, gorgonzola, the fresh mozzarella and burrata, the Alpine and island wheels. · 60 sandwiches

Panino con Salume

The cured-meat panino, Italy's deli counter: prosciutto, mortadella, salame, 'nduja, capocollo, culatello, bresaola, speck, lardo. · 71 sandwiches

Alto Adige & the Germanic North

The Tyrol and Friuli's Germanic shelf: speck on Schüttelbrot, the Brezel, canederli, Kaminwurzen, the strudel and Zelten sweets. · 12 sandwiches

Panino con Verdure

The vegetable panino: grilled and marinated vegetables, parmigiana, friarielli, caponata, peperoni cruschi, pesto and the vegetarian build. · 20 sandwiches

The Dish in a Panino

A regional cooked dish folded into bread: vitello tonnato, cassoeula, ossobuco, ragù napoletano, polpette, bollito, saltimbocca. · 23 sandwiches

The Panuozzo

Gragnano's baked pizza-dough sandwich: a length of bread dough oven-baked, split, filled, and returned to the oven to crisp. · 1 sandwich

The Gourmet & Modern Panino

The contemporary paninoteca and the immigrant street: burrata and crudo, beef tartare, truffle, the kebab and falafel, the Italian wrap. · 11 sandwiches

The Crostino

The Italian open-face toast: a small slice of bread under chicken-liver pâté, truffle, or a regional topping, eaten in a bite or two. · 2 sandwiches

The Regional & Everyday Panino

The place-named panino and the bread itself: the city-by-city panini and the rosetta, michetta, ciabatta and pagnotta they are built on. · 50 sandwiches

Filters

Showing of 427 sandwiches

Ciabatta con Prosciutto e Mozzarella

Prosciutto crudo and fresh mozzarella on ciabatta, the open holed crumb refereeing a dry salty ham against a wet milky cheese. Built close to eating, or the crumb drowns.

Brezel con Speck

The Brezel is the one filled bread dipped in lye before baking, and the South Tyrol speck sandwich is built on that step: a mahogany salt-skinned knot folded around juniper-smoked ham.

Bresaola con Rucola e Grana

A famous Italian antipasto folded into bread: air-dried Valtellina beef, dry rocket, shaved Grana. The beef is lean by law, drawn from five named muscles.

Bresaola con Limone

Bresaola dressed with lemon juice and olive oil.

Zelten Sandwich

South Tyrol's Advent fruit-and-nut Zelten loaf sliced thin and topped with juniper-smoked speck or an aged mountain cheese: a household folk pairing of the Bolzano Christmas table.

Wrap Italiano

The Italian bar chain's chilled-shelf reading of the wrap: prosciutto, fresh mozzarella, rocket and pesto rolled in a soft tortilla, sealed at the seam, in by the early 2000s.

Trapizzino

In 2008 a Roman pizzaiolo cut baked pizza bianca into a triangle and opened the corner into a pocket for a wet braise. That single structural move is the trapizzino, and the whole idea.

Trapizzino con Trippa alla Romana

Roman-style tripe stewed in tomato with mint and a heavy fall of pecorino, then spooned into a baked pizza-bianca pocket. The Saturday fifth-quarter dish made one-handed.

Trapizzino con Polpette al Sugo

Soft Roman meatballs in tomato sugo, spooned into a baked pizza-bianca pocket. The gateway trapizzino, where a high bread-to-meat meatball meets a sauce reduced tight enough to cling.

Trapizzino con Pollo alla Cacciatora

Hunter's-style chicken, stewed soft in tomato and white wine then pulled clean off the bone and reduced tight, packed into a baked pizza-bianca pocket: a Roman Sunday braise made walkable.

Trapizzino con Lingua in Salsa Verde

A poached beef tongue, soft to the point of buttery, turned through a loud parsley-caper-anchovy salsa verde and spooned into a pizza-bianca pocket: a Roman second course you can hold in one hand.

Trapizzino alla Picchiapò

A frugal Roman stew of broth-boiled beef rebuilt with onion and tomato, spooned into a pizza-bianca pocket: the plainest filling, and the one that leans hardest on the bread.

Trapizzino alla Parmigiana

Eggplant parmigiana rebuilt drier so it sets into a spoonable block, scooped into a baked pizza-bianca pouch. The single all-vegetable filling on the Roman trapizzino counter.

Trapizzino alla Coda alla Vaccinara

Roman butcher's oxtail braised until it slides off the bone, finished with cocoa, pine nuts, and raisins, then scooped into a pizza-bianca pocket. The fifth quarter made walkable.

Tramezzino Vegetariano

The meatless branch of the Italian crustless triangle invented at Caffè Mulassano in 1925: dressed vegetables held by mayonnaise inside soft white pancarrè, domed at the centre.

Tramezzino Uovo e Maionese

Tramezzino uovo e maionese: chopped hard-cooked egg bound with mayonnaise in a soft crustless triangle, the egg filling pared to two parts so the cooking has nowhere to hide.

Tramezzino Uovo e Acciughe

Mayonnaise-bound egg salad threaded with a small, careful dose of cured anchovy, sealed in the soft crustless triangle Turin invented in 1925. The egg carries; the anchovy deepens.

Tramezzino Tonno e Uovo

The tuna triangle's half-step up: oil-packed tuna and chopped hard egg worked into one bound salad, where the yolk's job is to buffer the tin's salt. Named at Turin's Caffè Mulassano, 1925.

Tramezzino Tonno e Pomodoro

Mayonnaise-bound tuna under a single ripe summer tomato in a soft crustless triangle, and a race against the slice's own water: the case's wettest tonno filling, replaced twice a day in July.

Tramezzino Tonno e Olive

A crustless white triangle of mayonnaise-bound tuna shot through with sliced olives, the green Sicilian cultivars sharp against the mild fish.

Tramezzino Tonno e Carciofini

Oil-packed tuna worked with mayonnaise and threaded with quartered marinated baby artichokes, sealed in a soft crustless triangle. The artichoke is the green lift in a flat spread.

Tramezzino Salmone e Rucola

Smoked salmon laid in thin sheets against raw peppery rocket, bound and sealed inside the soft crustless triangle Turin invented in 1925. The leaf cuts the cured fat; the fish carries the bite.

Tramezzino Prosciutto e Funghi

Prosciutto cotto and a jar of funghi sott'olio, mounded into Venice's overstuffed bombata triangle and eaten standing in a bàcaro with a small glass of wine in the shade.

Tramezzino Prosciutto e Formaggio

Cooked Italian ham and a mild meltable cheese, usually fontina or domestic emmental, layered cold into a soft crustless triangle. The deli pairing compressed onto bar bread.