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As a very poor excuse for a Chinese person, I’m not fond of rice. As a 12-year Chicagoan, I can live on bread, and just bread alone, if bread includes pizza, which it should, and does.

I’m talking about sammies filled to the gills with hierarchies of cold cuts and hot proteins; cheese melty and sliced; veggies crisp, juicy and pickled. Winter ‘teen temperatures and wind chills in the twenties are buffered by Portillo’s Big Italian Beef (on French bread), triple cheeseburgers from Jeri’s Grill (R.I.P.) power softball triple-headers, freshly roasted and carved turkey on kaiser from Jaffa for lunch propel you across the latter half of the work day, and slabs of D’Agostino’s deep dish… well, just because. If your paws can handle Chicago sammies, you can play 16-inch softball with bare hands.

My first outside-of-dining hall meal in America took place on the first Sunday of my college career, a quarter-pound cheeseburger at Yesterday’s (R.I.P., too). This joint was then one of the few places you could grab beers and watch sports in Evanston, Ill., an urban campus town sadly temperance central for a long time. No matter how much I forked away at my burger, it never seemed to get any smaller, and the fries seemed to multiply even as I kept mashing at them. But after spending one-third of my life in the City of Big Shoulders and bigger eating, my minimum intake now are half-pounders and I finish all the fries on my plate, as long as they are crispy. When I moved home to Singapore, all I could fathom were dainty (!) sandwiches prettied up to look posh (?!). I had to resort to a Subway footlong (!!) or be disappointed that Seah Street Delicatessen’s Reuben, while pretty legit, was three-quarters of a meal at best. My Quixotic question for almost seven years was: “When will we get sandwiches here for real women?”

Enter Park Bench Deli, indelibly, extremely edibly. When the boys unleashed this girl’s fantasy of massive American-style sammies upon Telok Ayer Street, artisanal breads were becoming a thing in Singapore - Sarnie’s (also on Telok Ayer) and Nick Vina were two great spots for pinup-worthy hunks of sourdoughs and ryes flanking top-notch ingredients. But the Park Benchers unveiled the true soul of sammies, which is blue-collar sustenance for eating ugly and possibly ruining your manicure. (It’ll definitely ruin your white collar work for the rest of the afternoon.) Because it’s Singapore, you’ll still pay $24 for a Reuben and $20 for an Italian sub — but there’s a $15 roast chicken salad BLT and $16 pork katsu. If you play it prudent by splitting each sammie into two and adding a fruit, it’s lunatically absurd value for lunch. Congratulations — you would have just invested in a local small business slinging quality with street chutzpah.

I ordered the mushroom melt, kale grilled cheese and Italian sub for three lunches. The sammies arrived a tick after 30 minutes, and mid-mushroom melt chomp, another delivery guy brought another bag filled with another trio of mushroom melt, kale grilled cheese and Italian sub. The Deli had duplicated my order, but they wouldn’t take any payment for it. My insistence could not go very far over email.

What’s a paramour of sandwiches to do? I shared the extra bounty with a fellow Park Bench fan, and this evening, got on my bike and rode down to the deli with $63, slotted the cash and a thank you card into their letterbox, then poked my head in and said, “You’ve got mail!”

I tried to run off like a prank caller before they could protest but they made me explain this monkey business. Then they contactlessly stuffed a Park Bench Deli tote bag into my hands. I wanted to pay for it — and I don’t know any of the boys personally — but they said, “No — this is for friends.”