 — village November - December 2009
   than we care to remember,
whole generations were reared on this hum-
ble foodstuff, which cannot be found outside
Ireland. But our love for it peaked in the boom
and, as with all affairs, the flower of romance
has begun to droop of late. But isn’t it time we
fell back in love with the Panino, putting it at
the centre of the sping new smart economy
that were all so excited about?
A little history
1
The first Panino was introduced to
Ireland by Sir Walter Raleigh: Wrong. We
now know that this piece of black propaganda
was circulated by MI during a long tea-break in
The Troubles. In fact, the honour goes to Guido
Nervi, a fteen-year-old from Naples who smug-
gled a Panino into Ireland on board a Ryanair
flight in . The hot sandwich escaped into
the wild when Nervi (unaware of Ireland’s red-
trouser ban) was viciously attacked by a group
of angry eight-year-olds on O’Connell Bridge
(they now work in “digital media”). The Panini,
meanwhile, multiplied and went feral.
2
The Panino was invented by Giovanni
Panino: Certainly, the legendary Venetian
explorer gave his name to the snack, but as with
every aspect of our lives today, the Chinese
are ultimately responsible. Legend has it that
Signor Panino discovered the toasted roll dur-
ing a trade mission to Western China and was
so taken with the delicacy that he foil-wrapped
it and carried it all the way home to Venice,
from a Londis in Szechuan province.
3
Panini sales account for one third of
Ireland’s GDP: This is based on old data. And
even now when we no longer own % of the
world’s large cranes and % of Bulgaria, this
is a stretch. Certainly most economists agree
that the figure only stacks up if you include
sales of breakfast rolls and batter burgers.
  
 
No 1 The Panino
 Nostalgia
4
A Panino is just a bit of old toasted sand-
wich: False. The Panino is both squashed and
toasted.
Now some science…
One mystery remains: What is it that makes
this hot meta-sandwich such a uniquely Irish
taste sensation?
5
Famine Fear: The collective memory of
the Great Famine means the Irish will eat
pretty much anything thats handed to them.
A sanger in the hand beats eating a bush’, as
the saying goes. Historians have noted that
in the Post-Famine era, Irish farmers grad-
ually moved away from the potato crop and
towards their nearest Spar where Panini were
a more reliable food source.
6
Symbolic Sandwich: For psychologists,
the lure of Panini is more deeply rooted in the
Irish psyche. Panini - they say - are nothing
less than a bready embodiment of the Irish
people. Half-baked, uninspired, over-priced
and easily filled with rubbish - in the Panino
we see a mirror of ourselves, and everything
that makes it great to be Irish.
7
Aspirational Snack: Those in the field of
sociology have a very different theory, for them,
the Panino is the quintessential ‘aspirational
product. Straight off the griddle and steaming
hot, the Panino offers consumers a chance to
bite into the swash-buckling, cut-throat world
of profiteering that all of us aspired to, until
last Tuesday week. The Panino and the prop-
erty market share an identical recipe: Take
poor quality ingredients, add a pinch of for-
eign name (Westminster Downs, Westminster
Panini etc.), then overheat furiously.
Of course that’s as far as the Panino/Property
analogy can stretch, because as we all know,
a Panino quickly cools down leaving a soggy
mess that no one in their right mind wants to
deal with. Going forward, we need to develop
a new language for a Panino for a new genera-
tion. We should export it. There may be a par-
ticular market in Italy, where the IDA is already
having success with another Celtic Tiger refu-
gee, Ciabatta. Panini could become the new
River Dance – Johnston, Mooney and O’Brien
white slices rendered exquisite for the twenty
tens. We must save them from the fate of their
abandoned European cousins, Boxty and grid-
dle-bread. The Panino is a displaced icon await-
ing a nostalgia.
“Irish”
PHOTOS: ISTOCK, PHOTOCALL IRELAND
village_oct_09.indd 78 27/10/2009 15:40:25

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