Syglino (Σύγλινο) is the cured and smoked pork of the Mani Peninsula, in the same family as Cretan apaki but with its own treatment. It is preserved meat: pork worked through curing, smoking and a fat-set finish so it keeps without refrigeration, then sliced thin to eat. In a sandwich it behaves like the salt-and-smoke anchor, the strong element everything else is built around rather than a soft filling, so its role is closer to a cured ham than to a hot grilled meat.
The preparation is what defines it and it runs in stages. Pork is cut into pieces and cured, then smoked over aromatic wood and herbs until it carries a deep smoke note all the way through. The piece that sets syglino apart from a plain smoked cut is the finish: the cured, smoked meat is cooked and then packed or sealed in pork fat, often with orange peel or local aromatics, which both preserves it and softens the texture. Sliced for a sandwich, it should be cut thin against the grain so the dense meat eats tender rather than chewy, and warmed only briefly if at all, since hard heat dries it out and pushes the salt forward. Good execution is meat that is firm but yielding, smoke and cure balanced rather than purely salty, the fat finish keeping it moist; sloppy execution is a slice cut thick and tough, a smoke level so heavy it goes acrid, or meat dried out by overcooking until it eats like jerky in the bread.
In a sandwich the supporting cast is built to answer that salt and smoke. Bread with a real crust takes the assertive meat best; a sharp soft cheese, a bright pickle, or a tomato adds the moisture and acid the cured pork lacks on its own. Because the meat is already intense, the rest of the build stays restrained, present to balance, not to compete. Across the Mani the cure time, smoke wood and aromatics vary by maker, so no two are quite alike, and the orange-scented fat finish is a recurring regional signature. Cretan apaki, the closely related smoked pork it is so often compared to, has its own curing logic and deserves its own article rather than being crowded in here. The test for syglino in bread is steady: thin slices, smoke and salt in balance, and a counterweight of acid or moisture against the cure.