Pan Bagnat: The Sandwich That's Basically a Salad in Disguise

Pan bagnat is a Provençal pressed sandwich from Nice, and once you make it properly, it ruins every other sandwich you've ever loved.
The name means bathed bread in the old Occitan dialect of the region. The bread doesn't just hold the filling, it soaks it up. Olive oil, tomato juice, a little vinegar, anchovy. Everything pressed together until the sandwich becomes one unified thing. Tuna, Castelvetrano olives, hard-boiled eggs, capers, pickled onion, ripe heirloom tomatoes, all layered into hollowed ciabatta and left under a heavy pan for at least an hour. Overnight if you can wait.

This is old Nice food. Worker food. A meal you could carry and eat cold the next day, and it would only be better for the wait. Like a Niçoise salad pressed into bread. The filling is the point. The bread is just the boat.