No frills, just Sandwich Week:

The sandwich: Chicken parm roll from Torrisi Italian Specialties, 250 Mulberry St. in Manhattan.

The construction: Pretty simple, really: A soft sesame-seed roll with breaded chicken, red sauce, fresh mozzarella and fresh basil.

Important background information: I mentioned my high standards before, but they’re especially high when Italian food comes into play. My mother is Italian and a terrific cook, and, like all good Italian (or half-Italian) men, I’m fiercely loyal to her food. Plus then I worked at an Italian deli that made its own mozzarella and everything, so I’m pretty distinguishing when it comes to that cheese.

And I think if I had read the New York Magazine review of Torrisi Italian Specialties I might have skipped the place entirely. It refers to Italian-American cooking as an “oft-derided cuisine” and suggests that Torrisi is a “high-concept gimmick.”

First of all, who’s deriding Italian food? I thought Italian, and especially the American interpretation of Italian food, was like the main food culture that everyone agreed on. Who doesn’t like pizza?

I mean, maybe I’m biased, but the idea of serving a variety of food ironically is about the most obnoxious thing I’ve ever heard. Especially when that style of food was delicious long before you got your condescending hands on it. Food is to be enjoyed unironically. And I guess it hits home to me if someone’s playfully mocking Italian-American food, since I grew up loving it and then spent years laboring over it at the deli.

Granted, I have no idea if Torrisi Italian Specialties really set out to serve the food I grew up loving in some sort of ironic fashion. The place was almost pretentious in its lack of pretense, but that could mean anything. Plus, you know, who cares? Like I said, I believe food should be enjoyed for the sake of enjoying food, so the motivations of the people serving the food don’t really make a difference to me. I’m here to eat.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Very good, but not exceptionally good. I can’t point to a single element of the sandwich that didn’t taste as good as anyone could ever expect. The sauce was sweet, the cheese was gooey, the chicken was hot and tender, the basil was, well, basily. And all those ingredients are delicious.

But nothing on the sandwich really jumped out at me to make me be like, “whoa! That’s the best (insert that thing here) I’ve ever had.” Plus something in there — either the breading of the chicken or the mozzarella — was pretty salty and certain bites of the sandwich might have bordered on too salty.

On the whole, though — like I said — it was very good. An amazing number of eateries manage to screw up chicken parm sandwiches, which is baffling because they’re pretty simple. Torrisi Italian Specialties is not one of those eateries. They make chicken parm sandwiches as well as anyone. Just not appreciably better.

What it’s worth: The $7 price tag was more than reasonable, but probably part of what’s holding me back from a more glowing review of the sandwich is that I waited about a half hour for them to make it. I’m pretty sure I just went in at precisely the wrong time; the line was never longer than it was when I got on it. Regardless, by the time I got the sandwich, I expected it to be epically awesome.

And though the sandwich was delicious and I’m glad I ate it, it was not so decidedly better than a chicken parm hero at a good pizzeria to make it worth the trip to SoHo and the long wait.

The rating: 83 out of 100. Better than the Cuban I made but not better than the Sloppy Bao. If the Chicken Parm Roll from Torrisi were a baseball player, it would be Paul Konerko. Indisputably good, but no one could ever reasonably argue it’s a Hall of Famer.