Except that’s what Joe did, and they kind of forgot to paninize it. Or something. I think they put it together and just skipped the whole heating-squishing process. It was a pre-panini’ed panini, which ends up just being a sandwich.

Kind of like my chicken salad sandwich. At least I expected mine to be cold.

Panini is a great word. It fits into the Food category of “Words-You-Cannot-Sound-Macho-While-Saying,” like couscous and escargot. I don’t care how gruff and deep and manly your voice is, when you ask for a big helping of couscous and endive salad, all the macho has left you. Bye bye.

What Joe actually ordered was a grilled panini. According to Wikipedia, the inerrant source of all information, a panini – or, to be proper, a panino, which is the correct singular of panini – is simply a “sandwich made from a small loaf of bread, typically a ciabatta.” A heated and pressed panini, er, panino, is just one type of many possible panini.

(If you Google Image Search for panini, though, you’ll find pictures of grilled panini until the 5th page of results, where this one shows up. I cannot tell if it is grilled or not. I’d like to try it with Filling Option #6. That tasty cheese is irresistible. You’ll also find a picture of the Smurfs on the 1st page of results. I bet they like mushrooms in their panini.)

I guess Joe’s cold sandwich still counted as a member of the panini panoply, then. I won’t call customer service after all.

Resources: Can’t get enough? Okay then:

Get your panini grills here. They are the latest rage in food service. And did you know they can cook virtually anything? “Yep, Bob, just throw that whole chicken on my panini grill there. Oh sure, it can handle it…”

The Panini Happy blog. Good recipes. I wish I had a panini grill.

Of course, a Squidoo page. How could there not be one?

Image Credit: The beautiful portabella and mozzarella panini picture is from daisygp at BiggestMenu.com. People at that site are licking the picture. The panini craze has gone a bit far.

The indelibly grill-marked panini image is from Chef Max Huppert, who says that panini “is simply the Italian name for sandwich, however it is mostly used in reference to sandwiches that are placed in a two-sided cooking press that compresses and grills the sandwich until hot and toasted” (emphasis mine). Hmm. Maybe I should call customer service. He is a chef.

And this picture of a great big panini grill for the accident-prone is from SnapDragon.com. You’ll have to go there to find out exactly why it has such long handles…