Out and about in Belltown, I espy a hand-lettered chalkboard in the window of Bambino's, promising "New York Style" sandwiches, including my favorite, beef tongue.
Aha! A chance to write a post in support of a neglected cut of deli meat and say something nice about Bambino's for a change, instead of griping about the lackluster "East Coast" pizzas and the dinner server's tattoos. (Not just Bambino's, either; tats last week at Cucina deRa, too, with a lip piercing thrown in. Is this a trend? I could understand this on Broadway, but it seems a bit aggressive for genteel Belltown.)
Printed menu says all nine sandwiches are served "Pilled High," a typo, no doubt. Anyway, there it is, the Piemontese, $7.90 for beef tongue with garlic mayo on a baguette. I settle in (on a stool) with my book, The Journals of John Cheever.
The (untattooed) lunch server returns. "Um, we're out of the tongue," she says. "It hasn't been all that popular."
How hard would it be, I ask tartly, for the shift manager to simply erase the tongue from the blackboard? Cheever, I imagine, would have found something gracious to say. By coincidence, this is the 25th anniversary of his death.
Could wander a block down Cedar to Mike's East Coast Sandwiches, get a more-than-passable reuben. But it wouldn't be tongue, dammit. Ah, Cheever might say, we are so demanding, so spoiled.
Bambino's East Coast Pizzeria, 401 Cedar St., 206-269-2222 
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