Pan bagnat literally means wet or soaked bread and, as the infamous former mayor of Nice Jacques Médecin explains in his book on the city’s cuisine, started life as “simply a salad Niçoise” with stale bread, rather like the Italian panzanella (which is perhaps no surprise, given that the city was once part of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia). “The bread soaked up the olive oil and the juice of the tomatoes, making a delicious accompaniment to the salad” – so delicious, he claims, that “our grandmothers” devised a more practical way to serve the two together by putting the salad inside the bread instead, rather than vice versa.
Chapeau to those clever mamis, because the rich, squidgy pan bagnat must be up there with the muffuletta, the bánh mì and the cheese savoury as one of the world’s finest sandwiches. It’s also the ideal choice for summer picnics, given that it’s at its best prepared ahead of time and firmly squashed, which is not something that can be said for the croque monsieur.
