The piadineria-style gourmet is the made-to-order bar version of the fold, where the round stops being a fixed item and becomes a base built to a chosen combination at the counter. A piadineria griddles rounds to order and the gourmet reading raises and widens what goes inside them: a named soft cheese rather than a generic one, a specific prosciutto or speck, grilled vegetables cut and seasoned on the spot, leaves and dressings chosen per build. The defining fact is that the components are still doing the old job of covering one another, fat against bitterness, tang against salt, the warm neutral round as common ground, but they are sourced and combined deliberately, the customer choosing a balance rather than receiving a default.
The craft is keeping that range disciplined and the round equal to a heavier, wetter filling. A good piadineria cooks the piadina fresh for each order so it is folded supple and hot rather than reheated stiff, and the soft cheese goes in first, smeared into the warm crumb so it slackens against the heat and binds the rest in place before the meat and the leaves are layered on. The better the components, the more restraint the build needs: a finer prosciutto wants less of it, a sharper cheese wants a quieter partner, and a wider menu is only an improvement if each combination is still legible in one bite rather than a pile of good things competing in the same seam. A sloppy gourmet fold mistakes more and pricier for better, overloads the round, and collapses the balance the format is supposed to sharpen.
Its variations are the points along the same counter rather than a regional shelf. There is the plain Romagnola round as the unadorned reference the bar version is judged against, the single-element folds the made-to-order builds are assembled from, the grilled-vegetable construction the piadineria turns out alongside the cured-meat ones, and the contemporary composed reading where a cook designs the fold as a plated idea. Each of those is a distinct build with its own balance to strike, and each deserves its own article rather than being crowded in here.