AND ANOTHER INTERESTING thing about the Tenderloin is that it's all of a sudden lousy with Vietnamese sandwich shops. I mean lousy in the best sense of the word, although many of the shops give the appearance of being only marginally interested in making sandwiches.

I went into one which I liked the looks of very much because it was below street level and had checkered tablecloths and an all-around homey-feeling feel to it. No menu, no specials board, no boards of any kind. No people. A guy came huffing out of a back room and asked if he could help me. –"What kind of sandwiches do you have?" I asked.

"Pork," he said. He pointed to a glass freezer case with piles upon piles of already wrapped sandwiches.

"Only pork?" I said.

"Only pork," he said.

All right, so I went into another place, two blocks away. This one seemed much more promising. It was all a-bustle inside, for one thing. Only as soon as I opened the door, I realized that none of the bustle had anything much to do with lunch. It was a tiny, two-table place, and both tables were taken up by card games.

"Can I help you?" said the woman at the counter.

"What kind of sandwiches do you have?" I asked.

"Pork," she said.

"Only pork?"

"Pork," she said. At least they made them fresh, I gathered, from the sliced French roll sitting on the counter behind her, bins of ingredients.

"No thank you," I said, and left, walking out between card games. To my right they were playing for brightly colored plastic chips, to my left real-looking dull green paper money, pretty thick piles of it, which scared me, right out in the daylight like that. But now I'm wondering if maybe they were fake bills – which would be a good idea for cards. Don't you think? Not knowing what to think, I found a third sandwich shop and went in. This one had a group of guys watching TV in the front corner, and a wall of video card-game machines in back, with a couple of takers. No one seemed to be eating. Again, I didn't see any menus.

"What kind of sandwiches do you have?"

"Pork."

"That's all?"

She nodded. "Across the street," she said, pointing to Saigon Sandwiches, half a block down Eddy, other side of Larkin. Line out the door. "They have chicken, everything," she said. I reviewed Saigon Sandwiches five years ago. Loved it.

On the corner of Larkin and Eddy, crisscross from Saigon, was another new sandwich place I'd never seen before. Cindy's Deli. It looked cleaner, brighter, airier than any of the other ones I'd been in, which kind of bummed me out. On the other hand, they had chicken, beef, and combo ham. Four kinds to choose from!

So I went in and ordered me up a sandwich.

"What kind?" the cash-register woman, presumably Cindy, asked.

"Pork," I said.

And the guy behind the sandwich counter, listening in, went to work. "No mayonnaise," I said. "No mayonnaise," Cindy said to the sandwich man, making my change.

I went and sat in the table by the window – my only choice, since Cindy herself had occupied the other table in the other window by virtue of a butterflied book and a telephone.

I looked out the window at Saigon Sandwiches. It looked good over there. I got up and walked over to the sandwich man. "No mayonnaise," I said.

"No mayonnaise," he repeated. All smiles. He made me a chicken sandwich.

Luckily another guy came in just then wanting chicken, and not wanting mayonnaise either, so I didn't feel bad insisting on pork, and I stood there and watched him do the whole thing. Plate of barbecued pork, into the microwave, out of the microwave into the roll, a sprinkle of something, a shake of something ...

"Pate?" he said.

"No thanks."

Cucumber, carrots, white onion, cilantro ...

"Hot pepper?"

"Yes."

Jalapeños, which weren't particularly spicy, but helped add up to a spectacularly flavorful sandwich. I love Vietnamese sandwiches, especially pork ones. And as I sat in the window of this funky Tenderloin establishment, munching and crunching and all-around laying into this one (for only two bucks, by the way), I also had to love what else was for sale at Cindy's:

Things to drink, cigarettes, shaving supplies, condoms ...

Cindy's Deli. 601 Larkin (at Eddy), S.F. (415) 345-9632. Mon.-Sat., 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Takeout available. No alcohol. Credit cards not accepted. Wheelchair accessible.

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