Paninaro

Every sandwich at Paninaro starts with schiacciata — the crisp, airy, golden Tuscan flatbread, baked fresh and treated as the point of the order rather than the wrapper around it. That focus traces back to a single sandwich. Owner and creator Marco Distefano has told local reporting that Paninaro grew out of a Florentine schiacciata he tasted years ago and could not stop thinking about, and that he spent months in 2023 working out his own version of the bread and rebuilding its sauces from memory. The shop opened modestly, a small takeout window tucked into the back of a Chinatown coffee shop, and has since grown into a pair of Ottawa counters, with the Somerset Street West location holding down the original Chinatown corner.

The menu reads like a set of variations on that bread. The Moda Mortadella is the clearest statement of intent — mortadella, house-made stracciatella, pistachio cream, and a final scatter of pistachio crumb, rich and layered without collapsing into a pile. The Milano Mingle pushes harder, salami and pecorino cream and artichoke cream and spicy eggplant pulling salty, creamy, bitter, and hot against one another. The Porchetta Paninaro carries the namesake weight with porchetta, pistachio cream, fior di latte, and spicy eggplant; the Primo Prosciutto runs leaner with prosciutto crudo, roasted red peppers, basil aioli, and balsamic glaze; the Tartufo Trance keeps it short with salami, pecorino, and truffle honey. Vegetarians are not an afterthought — the Pistachio Passeggiata stacks stracciatella, sun-dried tomato, artichoke hearts, and pistachio crumb, and the Caprese leans on fresh tomato, fior di latte, basil, and pistachio cream. Even dessert stays in format: the Nutella Notturno keeps the schiacciata going with mascarpone and pistachio crumb, and the cannoli arrive two to an order, pistachio-dipped at the ends.

What separates the sandwiches from the average counter build is that the spreads do real work. Pistachio cream, pecorino cream, artichoke cream, stracciatella, spicy eggplant, and a house spicy mayo are not condiments smeared on at the end; they are structural, the components that decide what each sandwich actually tastes like. That is why the builds feel designed rather than merely assembled. The naming carries the same deliberate streak — Moda Mortadella, Milano Mingle, Pistachio Passeggiata, Tacchino Tricolore — Italian wordplay that keeps tying the counter back to its source. Paninaro takes its name from the Paninaro movement of 1980s Milan, the youth scene that grew up around panini bars and Italian street-café style, and the shop puts real effort into living up to the reference rather than just borrowing it.

Distefano's path to the counter runs straight through that obsession. By local accounts he went to culinary school with a sandwich shop already in mind, then chased the specific memory of Florentine schiacciata until he had a recipe he trusted. The early takeout window at the back of a coffee shop was the proof of concept, and the following it built is what turned a side project into two storefronts. One sandwich tells the rest of the story. The Inferno — spicy capicollo, spicy soppressata, provolone, spicy eggplant, tomato, and house spicy mayo — was meant to be a passing feature, and it stayed on the menu because regulars kept asking for it back.

The Somerset counter is built for the way people actually use it: hours weighted to lunch and the early evening, Tuesday through Saturday, pickup ordering rather than a reservation book, and a catering arm that sends schiacciata platters and salads out to office lunches and weekend parties. A second counter downtown on O'Connor Street works the weekday midday crowd on the same logic. What began as one person trying to rebuild a sandwich he missed is now a working Ottawa lunch run — order at the counter, wait, carry it out — with the bread baked fresh and the creams made in house.