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Victory Sandwich is for lovers

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Victory Sandwich is for lovers

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Found it.

My wife and I are at this point in our relationship where we forget things that we just did.

Did we lock the door? Did we turn off the oven? Did we let the cat back inside?

Most of these concerns are not worth turning the car around. Forgetting whether or not you took off your wedding ring is another story.

This weekend my friend Alison stopped by (remember her?) and the three of us put on our Halloween costumes. I was Axe Cop again, my wife went as Carmen Sandiego, donning a red pimp hat that she refashioned for the role, and Alison went as Medusa, her hair lined with rainbow rubber snakes.

We were headed to a party. When we arrived at the address at midnight, it looked like all of the lights were off. We stood shivering in the empty driveway for 15 minutes before walking to the door, knocking and summoning a bewildered man.

The host, who looked a bit like Jesus, pushed back his long brown hair and said we were more than welcome to hang out, but we were a day early for the party.

We were all dressed up with nowhere to haunt, so we decided we’d grab a snack at Victory Sandwich. No one ever gets my Axe Cop costume, but my wife kept getting “found” by other customers as we ate our food.

Victory has changed its menu a bit. The Super Mario (meatballs, sauce and provolone) and the Porkemon (smoked pork with Korean barbecue sauce and slaw) taste like heaven in your mouth. I also like Victory because of its uncompromising view of sandwiches. There are no substitutions. Don’t like an ingredient? Too bad. I’ve never had a sandwich there that I didn’t like, and I crave more than a few of them.

Love isn’t the first thing I associate with late night dining, but at 1 a.m. Saturday, in a room full of drinkers and bohemian waiters delivering the strictly-assembled food, I saw a moment of tenderness.

Victory Sandwich has a romantic side.

Typically, when I wear a costume, I take off my wedding ring. It’s a practical concern, because I’ve lost about 50 pounds and have yet to get my ring re-sized. (Yes, I realize this is easy to do. Yes, I’m getting it done. I have this fear in the back of my head that I’m gonna go all Elvis and put the weight back on. That’s another post.) I’m always afraid I’ll lose it while keeping up with all of the costume accessories.

For whatever reason, that night I couldn’t quite remember if I’d left my ring at home. My wife and I realized this about halfway through the Victory parking lot. I suspected I’d left it at home, but my wife said better to cover my bases in case I did derp up. My wife has documented my stupidity on numerous occasions, so I had to concede her point.

I went back to Victory and walked over to the booth where we’d been sitting. I asked the new occupants, who looked like they were in their 20s, if they’d seen a ring.

“What’s it look like?” one of them asked.

“Well, it’s a white gold ring,” I said. “It’s my wedding ring.”

As quick as you could snap your fingers, the people in the booth slid out of their seats and onto the Victory Sandwich floor, crawling to catch a glint of my ring underneath the tables. We found an errant rubber snake from Medusa’s hair, but no ring.

I imagine if I’d made a big enough fuss, the whole restaurant would’ve been on its hands and knees scouring every square foot of the place for a stranger’s wedding band.

I went over to our waiter, who was taking a much-needed dinner break at the bar. He was completely bald and had a neatly-trimmed beard. He stopped what he was doing to ask every server in the place if they’d seen a white gold ring. He called the man who bused the table over and asked him, too. No one had.

Our waiter found a scrap of paper and took my information.

“It’s fine,” I said as I wrote down my phone number and a description of the ring. “I’m like 90 percent sure it’s at the house.”

“Yeah, but better safe than sorry,” our waiter said.

There’s no moment of suspense here. My ring was on the night stand when I came back home. I was just touched that the customers and wait staff at Victory were so distressed about the possibility that I’d lost my wedding ring in their restaurant.

It was a weirdly adorable moment. If you believe in love and cheap sandwiches at late hours, Victory is your best bet.