Angela and her husband Onorino had spent years in the United States before returning to Italy and buying Caffe Mulassano, an Art Nouveau gem in the heart of Turin. They brought something back with them from their time abroad: a taste for the soft, filled sandwiches common in America and England. Angela adapted them using pancarré, a local white bread, stripped the crusts, and started filling them with whatever she had on hand. Anchovies and butter. Sliced veal with tuna and capers. Simple things, done well.

The poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, a regular at the cafe, reportedly gave the sandwich its name: tramezzino, from tramezzo, meaning "in between." A snack for the middle of the morning. A small thing to hold you over. The name stuck, and so did the sandwich. It spread fast. And nowhere did it land more naturally than Venice.

In Venice, the tramezzino is not a novelty. It is infrastructure. The city runs on it. Walk into any bacaro — the small Venetian wine bars scattered through the calli and campielli — and you will find a glass case stuffed with them: triangles of soft white bread, bulging with tuna and olive, egg and anchovy, artichoke and shrimp. You order one alongside a small glass of white wine or a spritz, you stand at the counter, and you eat. This is the cicchetti hour, Venice's version of aperitivo, and the tramezzino is its most democratic citizen.

The Venetian tramezzino is its own thing. The bread is softer, almost pillowy, held together with a generous layer of mayonnaise that keeps everything moist and cohesive. The fillings tend toward the sea, because Venice tends toward the sea. But the ritual is what matters most: the pause, the glass, the counter, the conversation. Some things get it right from the start.