Florencia Baldini Last Updated on May 11, 2026This Italian sandwich is my homemade version of the kind of focaccia you get at Antico Vinaio, the famous Tuscan sandwich chain. I’ve had it at the shop in Rome location, and they’ve now expanded to multiple cities across Italy plus a new shop in London.
It’s a simple build — focaccia, mozzarella di bufala, tomatoes, basil, and pesto — but if you make the focaccia and pesto from scratch, it’s genuinely worth the effort. It will genuinely be the best sandwich you’ll ever have!
About Antico Vinaio
Antico Vinaio started as a small wine bar in Florence in 1991 and grew into one of the most well-known sandwich shops in Italy. The lines are long but they move quickly, and the sandwiches are huge.
On the day I went, we ordered the one with mortadella and pistachio pesto with burrata, which was incredible.
The one I’m making today is inspired by a sandwich I never got the chance to try, but it was totally up my street! It’s called L’Italiana from All’Antico Vinaio, and it’s typically built with:
- Prosciutto di Parma PDO 18 months — delicately cured Italian ham, aged for deep flavor
- Mozzarella di Bufala PDO — creamy, milky, and rich
- Tomato — sweet and juicy
- Basil pesto — fragrant and herby
- Schiacciata — Tuscan flatbread, similar to focaccia but thinner and crispier
That layering — cured meat, creamy cheese, a flavorful sauce, fresh tomato, and a good bread — is what I borrowed for this recipe, just in a vegetarian summer version.
Why the Ingredients Matter
The Focaccia
My focaccia recipe is here. If you don’t have time to make your own, a good bakery focaccia will work — just make sure it’s the soft, oily kind, not a dry supermarket version.
Mozzarella di Bufala
Mozzarella di bufala is made from the milk of water buffalo raised mostly in the Campania region of southern Italy, and it’s a completely different cheese in texture and flavor. It’s softer, wetter, and creamier, with a slightly tangy, almost grassy taste that regular fior di latte mozzarella just doesn’t have. When you tear it open, it should release a little milky liquid — that’s a good sign. In a sandwich like this, where the cheese isn’t melted and isn’t masked by anything, the quality is going to come through in every bite. Buy the best you can find, ideally DOP certified, and use it the same day you open the package.
Prosciutto di Parma
If you want to turn this from a vegetarian sandwich into something closer to what you’d actually eat at Antico Vinaio, add a few slices of prosciutto di parma. It’s a dry-cured ham from the Parma region of Emilia-Romagna, aged for at least 12 months (often longer) and made with nothing but pork and salt — no nitrates, no smoke, no shortcuts. The result is silky, sweet, and salty all at once, and it pairs beautifully with mozzarella di bufala because the salt in the ham balances the milky richness of the cheese. Ask for it sliced fresh and paper-thin, and lay it on the sandwich in loose, ruffled folds rather than flat sheets — it makes a difference to the texture.
Pesto
I always make my own pesto. Store-bought versions are usually too oily, too salty, and taste nothing like the real thing. You have two options here: if you want to make a bigger batch to keep in the fridge for the week, my food processor recipe is here. If you only want enough for this sandwich, make a single portion in a pestle and mortar — it takes about five minutes and the texture is noticeably better. The recipe for that is below.
Homemade Pesto (1 Portion)
Use a mortar and pestle if you can. A food processor works but it heats up the basil and makes the pesto bitter and uniform. The mortar gives you a chunkier, brighter pesto.
Ingredients
- A handful of fresh basil leaves
- 1/2 clove of garlic
- 1 or 2 tablespoon of pine nuts
- 15g of Parmesan cheese, finely grated
- Extra virgin olive oil, to taste
- A pinch of salt
A Note on Time
If you make the focaccia and pesto from scratch, this isn’t a quick lunch — the focaccia alone needs time to rise. But the end result is genuinely close to what I had at Antico Vinaio, and the homemade focaccia and pesto make a noticeable difference compared to store-bought.
Worth it.
Focaccia Sandwich (Antico Vinaio Inspired)
Video
Ingredients
- 2 squares of focaccia, homemade — recipe linked below
- 1 ball of mozzarella di bufala
- 2 ripe tomatoes
- A small handful of fresh basil leaves
- 2 tablespoons of pesto, homemade, recipe below
- A drizzle of olive oil
- Salt and pepper
Instructions
- Slice your focaccia square in half horizontally. If it’s been sitting around, warm it in the oven for about 3–4 minutes at 180°C so the outside crisps up.
- Spread a tablespoon of pesto on the bottom slice.
- Slice the mozzarella di bufala and lay it over the pesto.
- Slice the tomatoes thickly, sprinkle with a little salt to draw out some moisture, then layer them on top. Tuck the basil leaves between the tomato slices. Spread the second tablespoon of pesto on the inside of the top slice, then close the sandwich.
- Finish with a drizzle of olive oil, a pinch of salt, and a crack of pepper.