Editor's Note

Sometimes, you read an article, and you can't help but smile while reading it. Toto Panino has been a popular staple with the expat community for years. It's not just a place to get panino's it's your "neighborhood panino joint. Chances are, you'll meet Toto, you'll strike up a conversation, and bam, Shanghai suddenly feels a bit smaller. He's a prime example of how some entrepreneurs in Shanghai are like onions. Layers upon layers. This onion is particularly genial (and his panino's are great).

Ask Salvatore Giammaria of Totino Panino about his sandwiches. You will get a story for each one. He may tell you about the time he made a towering mash-up of three sandwiches as a birthday gift for a friend. He may share a Proustian sense memory that takes you back to an idyllic childhood in the southern coastal city of Bari, Italy. Or he may just give you a blow-by-blow account of how he stacks ingredient upon ingredient. His eyes widen. Immediately, you're roped in. First, we put on the salami. And then we add the peppers… Then (He builds suspense with pregnant pauses)… we add the burrata. The whole thing ascends to a fever pitch before he describes slathering on the final condiment and capping it with a slice of homemade bread.

… And that's all before you have even placed your order.

Stick around for a bit longer, and you're bound to hear a few more stories too. That's what we did, and our conversation touched on everything from the golden age of the expat packages in Shanghai to the finer points of sandwich architecture. Here is a little taste of what we talked about.

You weren't always a restaurateur. What originally brought you to China?

So, my degree is in accounting. 23 years ago, I came to China with the Natuzzi Group, the furniture brand, to open a factory. Why? Because there were no job opportunities in the south of Italy.

I owe that company a lot. They gave me a shot. I really grew up by taking that job. That was 2001. When I first arrived, we were filling one shipping container with sofas every two days. When I left in 2007, the average was 17 containers per day. We started with 180 workers. When I left, there were 1,200. The factory was working on three shifts. I loved that job. I was so proud to be part of that project. I worked hard, played hard, and earned a lot of money. I learned how to be pragmatic and adaptive, to get things done.

What happened next?

I wanted to move on to a sales position, but Natuzzi said that I was more valuable to them in production. I mean production is nice, but I wanted to do something that made me feel alive. I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm kind of a people person. So, I put my resume on the market, and a week later a chemical company found me. They needed someone who understood the system in China and could represent their office here, so they took me on.

Within the first year, I got discouraged. I wasn't generating the sales figures I wanted, so I went to my boss and handed him my resignation letter. I said, "You pay me a lot, but I'm not good. I was expecting a little bit more training here, but I got six days of it. That was it."

The guy just looked at me and said, "I don't know if you're joking or if you're stupid. You cut costs by 30 percent with zero training. You haven't lost a single client. You cut a lot of dead branches that were killing us. I'm going to keep this letter because I want to look at it sometimes and laugh at you."

That gave me a shot in the arm. After that, I grew my sales 20 percent a year. That lasted for about nine years. Then they brought on a new GM who brought his own people. He thought he could close all the branches in China and run things from outside the country just because he read the Financial Times every day. So, I left. Six months later, that guy got fired.

So, over the next few years, I did projects as a consultant with a few other companies in a few different industries. But you know, one morning, you wake up, you're sitting on the edge of your bed, and you just start realizing it's time for a change. So, one night in May 2018, I was with my friends Julio and Lucky Lasagna, and Totino Panino was born. I signed a rental contract on May 29, 2018. In June we did our first food test. And we sold our first panino in July.

And so far, so good?

I'm still learning. I'm still writing on my computer, my Excel files with the recipes, SOPs, and costs. I think my computer can tell you exactly how much anything in this place costs.

That's your accounting background shining through …

Disease… It's mostly a disease [laughs]. I like to be in control. It's mostly about order.

So, do you think you would have been able to realize this dream without all this previous business experience?

Without the experiences from my previous life, of course, I couldn't do this. But I think the most important precondition for all of this is just being here in China. In Europe, it would be impossible to do this, probably in the US too. The rules and the taxation alone will kill you. Here, you don't need so much money to start something. We opened our first shop with around 350,000 yuan (US$49,151.55). That was all. This new shop costs about a million.

Speaking of which, how are you enjoying the new space? It's clearly bigger. What else has changed?

For starters, the specials we used to do on rotation at the old location are now permanent on the menu, because we have the capacity to do more. We do it all every day. Before, it was impossible to do this kind of thing. Our team is twice the size now too. But paradoxically, the rent here is half of what we were paying at the original shop in terms of cost per square meter.

So, we started with 12 panini on the menu at the original location. Now we have 33 and around 10 dishes. We're doing focaccia, and we're starting to do some other street food too, like panzerotti, or fried calzone.

We're also doing suppli. These are Roman-style deep-fried rice balls dressed with tomato sauce that we make here daily. They're almost like arancini, but suppli is different. Arancini is a masterpiece like the Mona Lisa. They have a complex balance of spices from all these different regional influences in Sicily, like the Arabs and the Spanish. Suppli is simpler, more like a snack. You pack the rice around a little cube of mozzarella, deep fry it, and when it's done the mozzarella melts inside. We call it suppli al telefono because the mozzarella stretches like a telephone cord when you pull it apart.

Where do you get the ideas for your sandwiches?

Some are just memories from my hometown. We do an eggplant parmigiana panino. This one brings back memories of going to the beach when I was 12 or 13. Open the fridge and find the parmigiana. Put it between two slices of bread still cold. Wrap it in aluminum foil. Go to the beach, swim, play in the sand, and just leave the sandwich in the sun. By lunchtime, the sandwich is hot and ready to eat. The foil worked like an oven. Our Apulia Flavor, which has burrata, sun-dried tomatoes, and eggplant, reminds me of being a kid. In the south of Italy, every family dries their own tomatoes. I was the youngest in the family, and it was my job to turn the tomatoes over as they dried.

I also make a lot of sandwiches for my friends. I've got a sandwich on the menu that my friend Julio created. He wanted to eat something that reminded him of Napoli, so we took some sausage and stewed broccoli and melted some provolone on top. Perfetto! BT [the owner of Cages] came in here once and asked me if I could make something crunchy and we had these onion chips. I played around with them a bit, and that's how we came up with the BT Special: onion chips, mozzarella, tomato, basil pesto and tomatoes. We have the Wolf selection. These three sandwiches are a tribute to my friend Raffi [owner of Cantina Agave].

But yes, we are always evolving here. I am always learning. After five years, people still come to eat our panini, and that means the concept is still working, but I don't want to make the same mistake I've seen other friends make and get too complacent. They just reach the peak of their popularity, and they never evolve.

So, what is the future for Totino Panino?

I don't want to be over 60 doing this job. But I also need to do something, to make something. So, my idea is that I will have enough money to open a small bar somewhere – near the sea, if possible. I grew up near the sea, and I have a lot of good memories near the sea. My wife, she'll say, "You go to the shop every day. What for?" I'll just tell her, "To stress out the employees. To drink, talk B.S. with people." You know. These kinds of things.

If you go

Opening hours: 11am-10:30pm

Venue: Unit 106, Bldg 3, Shang Kang Li, 陕康里3号楼1层106号

Address: Lane 358,Kangding Rd 康定路358弄

Tel: 139-1841-0140

Average price per person: 94 yuan (US$13.22)