National Panini Day 🥪

Although the first U.S. reference to panini dates to 1956, a precursor appeared in a 16th-century Italian cookbook. Panini sandwiches became trendy in Milanese bars, called paninoteche, in the 1970s, when office workers were looking for quick lunch choices. Trendy U.S. restaurants, particularly in New York, began selling the sandwiches, whose popularity then spread to other U.S. cities, each producing distinctive variations of the sandwich. In many English-speaking countries, a panino (Italian meaning “bread roll”) is a grilled sandwich made from bread such as ciabatta, foccacia and Italian baguettes. The bread is cut horizontally and filled with deli ingredients or other foods and then pressed in a grill.