on the cheap

Vici Koreana Real Pizza Billings & Stover

Barring the carrot-slaw incident for which, 26 years later, I’m probably still in trouble, I’ve never played with my food as much as I did recently with the sandwiches at Devlin’s Café. Dismantling them, recombining them, and sniffing at them, I must’ve looked as if I’d been raised by wolves. (Which, by the way, I wasn’t; see " carrot slaw. " ) In fact I was conducting a scientific study in contrasts — in complements and clashes.

Take prosciutto, pear, and camembert: dressed with arugula, the combination sings in your mouth like a suave quartet, each distinctive ingredient coming in, harmonizing or standing out, and fading at just the right time ($6.50). I compared it to the turkey on whole wheat with timid corn-bread stuffing ($6.25); the menu reads " served with cranberry, relish, " which I assumed was a typo, but no. The cloying cranberry relish — jelly, rather — is topped with pickles. There’s a Thanksgiving invite to decline. Both come with your choice of side dish; while the caprese’s unfortunate (look, it is its ingredients; get quality tomatoes and mozz or don’t bother), the potato-dill salad reminds you that plain mayo has its time and place, and this mellow but flavorful mixture’s it.

Of the panini (there are 15 sandwiches in all), both the Yankee (smoked turkey, bacon, white cheddar, and honey mustard, $6.50) and the Alpine (corned beef, caramelized onions, Swiss, and whole-grain mustard, also $6.50) confounded me at first. I kept chewing and chewing — is this too spicy? is that sweet enough? — unable to determine how or whether the push-pull of opposing flavors worked. And then, suddenly, they were gone. Answer: yes. As Woody Allen reminded us, even the Earl of Sandwich endured a few misses — including " two slices of turkey with a slice of bread in the middle " — before he could relish his hits. Tom Devlin, too, has concocted more successes than failures (and not one over $6.50, with several under $6, plus chips); just give him a little time. And hey, while you’re waiting, have a cappuccino brownie ($2.50). It’s a knockout.