{"id":88797,"date":"2026-07-03T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T06:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/?p=88797"},"modified":"2026-07-02T21:35:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T03:35:27","slug":"this-is-the-sandwich-of-the-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/this-is-the-sandwich-of-the-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"This Is the sandwich of the Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"This<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In his gripping text \u201cThe Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations,\u201d the American sociologist Robert K. Merton introduced the idea of multiple discovery. Technological inventions, he argued, often arise at the same time in different places, completely independent of one another. It happened with punk rock, gunpowder and Charles Darwin\u2019s (and Alfred Russel Wallace\u2019s) theories of natural selection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Restaurants have their own version of multiple discovery. So often, cooks separated by bridges, boroughs and borders arrive at similar ideas, be it salt bread or Mexico City tacos. Another example is the piadina, a flatbread from a mountainous region of northern Italy, which until recently, required a pack of bloodhounds to hunt down. Then, this summer, I blinked and the piadina could be found, in various styles, at multiple restaurants around town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coincidence? Let\u2019s find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t tell nonna<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started my search earlier last month at Testo, an Italian restaurant open since 2012. (I had a hunch piadina might be on the menu, since the place is named after the clay pan used to bake them.) When I arrived at the bar, I spotted one a piadina, pressed in the style that the owner Massimiliano Barbizzi learned from his mother in Savignano sul Rubicone, a riverside town in northern Italy. He substitutes olive oil for lard \u2014 forgive us nonna, we have sinned \u2014 and toasts his piadina over charcoal until it\u2019s as malty as a biergarten pretzel. Inside, arugula, mozzarella and pink folds of prosciutto are neatly stacked, like an Italian sub.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I called Mr. Barbizzi to explain the premise of this column, he was incredulous. \u201cYou think this is the first time people heard of piadina?\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think so.\u201d In fact, after moving to Manhattan in 2001, Mr. Barbizzi\u2019s first job was pulling espresso shots at a West Village cafe named Piadina. It closed years ago, but I was in luck: \u201cThe owners have a new place,\u201d he said, and it was less than a mile away in Williamsburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meet Mr. Piadina<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this is how I met Massimiliano Nanni, the grandfather of New York piadina, who pretty much everyone calls \u201cChicco Piadina.\u201d (It\u2019s even his email address.) Beginning in 1995, with his Manhattan cafe Piadina, Mr. Nanni opened multiple restaurants around town, including Saraghina in Bed-Stuy and Malatesta Trattoria in the West Village, all serving foods from Rimini in Emilia-Romagna, the birthplace of the piadina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can find Mr. Nanni at the new Lella Alimentari e Cucina, where piadina are furnished with conventional ingredients (prosciutto, stracchino) and local specialties (tuna salad, capers). On Mondays, he makes nearly 900 piadina, a week\u2019s supply, shaping them into irregular discs that are considerably thinner than those at Testo. \u201cIt\u2019s a very hard job,\u201d Mr. Nanni said. \u201cIf I get sick, who\u2019s gonna make the piadina?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who indeed? Is this why piadina aren\u2019t as abundant as they should be? \u201cThere is one new place,\u201d Mr. Nanni told me, \u201cbut the owners are not from Emilia-Romagna.\u201d Still, there was no denying: \u201cIt is very, very good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Et tu, piadina?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I arrived at Casa Piada around 5 p.m., the best or worst time to arrive at Casa Piada, depending on who you ask. On the one hand, it was happy hour, a three-hour block on weekdays when Aperol spritzes cost five bucks. On the other hand, cheap cocktails attract a crowd. Right as I began to wonder if Mr. Nanni had misled me, an employee flew from the kitchen, holding a crisp-looking lavash with cold cuts and hot peppers. Piadina!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or was it? Despite everything I had seen on the Casa Piada website, social media page and menu, Luca Lewis, an owner, told me these are really crostolo, another variety of Italian flatbread made by adding egg. Each week, they are baked in Pesaro, Italy, (his ancestral home) and shipped to the restaurant in vacuum-sealed pouches. \u201cThe bread, the water, the flour,\u201d he said, \u201ceverything is from Italy.\u201d Even the lard, which transforms his flatbreads into supremely flaky vessels for burrata, pesto and other latter-day fillings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Lewis pointed out that Casa Piada was supposed to open last year, but the opening was delayed until this April. Just in time, if you ask me, for a piadina-packed summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n