[6][7] The time-honoured West Australian sandwich consists of a long bread roll filled with Italian deli meats, cheese, and preserved, antipasti-style vegetables.

[1][5][7] Another description, courtesy of The Bell Tower Times, is "... a generous bread roll, a variety of deli meats & cheeses and then whatever else you want from the showcase of Mediterranean delights".

[5] The conti roll may have been born, and certainly was raised, in the Perth locality now known as Northbridge,[5] which has been described by SBS Food as "... the inner-city neighbourhood just north of the CBD and one of the Italian community’s traditional heartlands.

Another wave was sparked in 1921, by the imposition by the USA of quotas on immigration; between that year and 1933, the Italian-born population of Australia as a whole trebled.

[8] The family now renowned for establishing and operating The Re Store traces its origins to Salina, one of the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily, Southern Italy.

Nearly a decade later, he joined the first wave of Italian emigrants to Western Australia, when he travelled to Fremantle to try his luck on the Kalgoorlie gold fields.

In between gossiping and drinking coffee, the men would buy cornettos – a small, braided Italian roll – and fill them with the meat and cheese they had just purchased, laying the foundation for a local legend.

[5][6][8] "Dad started making the continental roll because there was a demand for it," Antonio's son, Tom Di Chiera, told SBS Food in 2016, "It’s not like they came up with the idea.

[1][2][13][14][15] Outlets that have come to serve conti rolls include Passione Gourmet Deli, Charlies Fresh Cafe, and Lo Presti & Son.

One Perth outlet, Deli's Continental, uses an undercoat of capsicum conserva topped with mortadella, salami, casalinga, and percorino-style cheese.

[2] In July 2020, Angelo Street Market and North Street Store combined to introduce Perth's longest ever conti roll, 10 times the size of a normal one: 'The Contimental', made up of a 1.2 m-long (3.9 ft) sesame seeded sourdough roll, 200 g (7.1 oz) each of smoked ham, sopressa, pepper mortadella and Swiss cheese, together with lettuce, tomato, red peppers, marinated eggplant, Spanish olives, sun dried tomato and mayonnaise.

In 2016, when American chef-turned-rapper Action Bronson visited Western Australia to record an episode of his cult show F*ck, That's Delicious,[26] he praised Di Chiera Brothers' conti roll as a "meat sanctuary".

[27] Two years later, in 2018, The New York Times, in an enthusiastic review of The Re Store's Northbridge offerings, including its conti rolls, described as "quite incredible" that establishment's then-81-year continuous history, in a relatively young city.

[28] By contrast, Di Chiera Brothers had had to close down indefinitely in the intervening year, 2017,[1][10][29] due to "... calamities of a personal, professional and pandemic-related nature ...",[30] but it reopened at the end of 2024 after a longer than anticipated hiatus.