Western Australia’s Continental Roll

Perth is isolated from the rest of Australia. It’s the capital of Western Australia, the largest state in that country and the second-largest in the world after Russia’s Republic of Sakha. There are 2.8 million people living in Western Australia, and over 90% of them live in and around Perth. Perth is separated from other densely-populated areas of Australia by thousands of miles of sparsely populated central savannas, deserts, plains and woodland areas that are collectively called the Australian Outback, and in fact it is closer geographically to Southeast Asian cities like Jakarta than it is to many of the other large population centers of Australia.

Like most of the cities of Australia though, Perth got its start as an English colony, and the demographics–largely English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh–reflect that origin. Apart from those Western European ethnicities (and the 30% or so reporting themselves simply as “Australian”) the largest demographic in Perth, and in Australia at large, is Italian-Australians. Though Italians had been settling in the eastern parts of Australia for decades, it was not until the Western Australian gold rushes of the late 19th Century that Perth began to see substantial numbers of Italian settlers, and this immigration continued throughout the 20th Century.

It was one such Italian immigrant family that initially developed Perth’s signature Italian sub sandwich the Continental Roll–or Conti Roll for short–during the mid-20th Century. But which one? Some accounts cite the Di Chiera family, who sold an Italian-style panino out of their grocery store in the 1950s. Others point to the Re Store, founded by the Re family in 1936, whose proprietor noticed customers stuffing cheese, meats, and pickles into bread and had the idea to start making those giant sandwiches himself. This origin also took place sometime in the 1950s. Whichever store started it, in those early days the Italian-Australian laborers patronizing these markets would order the sandwich as a panini Italiano but as the general Anglophone public caught on they gave it a more Anglophone name. Just as, in England, mainland Europe is referred to as “the Continent,” a crusty bread roll filled with Italian meats, cheeses, and preserved vegetables came to be called a “Continental roll.”

This type of sandwich is not a feature of Italian cuisine in Italy. As with the American Submarine or Torpedo, Hero or Hoagie, Grinder or Spuckie or even the variant local to Maine that is simply called an “Italian,” it was an innovation unique to the Italian immigrant experience that caught on and became popular with the populace at large. Unlike in America though, where these sandwiches spread from the Northeast and eventually became known across the whole country, the extreme isolation of Perth has left the Conti roll as a strictly local phenomenon in Perth. Crit, one of the Tribunal’s Australian correspondents currently living in Canberra, admitted to complete unfamiliarity with the Conti roll when I first asked her about it 2 years ago. That’s not to say that one couldn’t find a panino made with Italian salumi and antipasti in Melbourne or Sydney, Adelaide or Canberra or anywhere else in Australia. Only in Perth, though, is it the institution known as the Continental Roll.

The Conti roll starts with a long, crusty, chewy bread roll. For decades, many delis used the “banana roll” from North Perth bakery Vastese, but according to some sources they closed in 2015, despite their website still being active. I acquired a narrow, crusty, chewy locally-baked baguette for this version.

I’m only using an 8″ section though–this sandwich is going to be large.

I started by buttering the bread. In my experience, this is a required step in most Commonwealth countries and when I don’t do it, I get yelled at by Brits online.

The standard meats for a Conti roll are salami, coppa, and mortadella. I used soppressata, mild coppa, and an imported mortadella containing pistachios and peppercorns. No two Conti rolls seem to use the same cheese–I’ve seen mozzarella, provolone, and pecorino all mentioned in various descriptions, as well as Swiss, which is what I had on hand.

Continental rolls also feature such Italian antipasti as eggplant caponata or other marinated eggplant treatments, sun-dried tomatoes, olive salads, artichoke hearts, and roasted red peppers. In typical Australian fashion, julienned carrot and pickled beetroot are common sandwich toppings, as well as lettuce and tomato.

It’s a lot of sandwich, and the bread could barely contain its bounty, so I wrapped it in butcher paper to help set its shape.

This helped.. a little. As the cross-section shows though, the Continental Roll is a lot of sandwich.

I recommend leaving the paper on as much as possible while you eat it, lest you end up wearing as much of your continental roll as I did with this one. It’s definitely a sandwich worth trying though. Nearly any 3 Italian cured meats together will be a winning mix, but this particular combination of the salty, peppery soppressata with the sweet, warm spices of the coppa and the mild, fatty, mortadella is an especially good one, accented by the nuttiness of Swiss cheese. I might opt for a firmer eggplant preparation in lieu of the caponata next time, as it largely squished out the sides of the sandwich, but I was a fan of the flavor and how it combined with the salty and bitter olives, the sweetness of the roasted red peppers and the beetroot, and the intensity of the sun-dried tomatoes, salty and sweet, sour, and savory. Normally I can pick out artichoke hearts in a sandwich but their flavor got a bit drowned here, though their texture and that of the carrots was appreciated.

I am a new fan of the Continental roll, to be sure, though I don’t think I’ll make a habit of adding beetroot to sandwiches the way they do in Australia. In fact, I think this entire affair could be seriously improved by replacing much of the antipasti with some Chicago-style hot giardiniera. It’s a long way from Chicago to Perth, 11,000 miles, and shipping is probably prohibitively expensive. Still, I’d send somebody a jar if they’d put some in a real Perth Continental Roll, send me some photos, and tell me what they think of it. What do you say, friends of the Tribunal? Any Perthites in our ranks?