I loved bologna sandwiches when I was a kid. They were my go-to elementary school lunch: Bologna and cheese on white bread, dry. I don’t know when or why I grew out of it, but by the time I worked in the deli I found myself somewhere between suspicious and judgmental every time an adult came in and ordered a bologna sandwich.

Why do kids and adults have such starkly different tastes in food? Is there science on this? It seems like kids generally prefer simple, unsubtle food. I know taste buds supposedly change, but are kids’ taste buds not fully developed or something?

Wait, focus: I got a Barbecued Beef Bologna sandwich from Blue Smoke in Citi Field’s center-field concourse. It looked like this:

That’s a sesame-seed brioche bun with pickles, onions, barbecue sauce and a huge, huge hunk of bologna. You can’t tell from the picture but the meat has got to be almost an inch thick — unlike any bologna I’ve had before.

The sandwich tasted a lot better than I expected it would given my apprehension about the bologna. Barbecue sauce and pickles, you might know, make a great combination of sweetness and tanginess. I’m not normally a big fan of the onion but these were sliced so thin that they hardly affected the texture but still provided a nice bit of flavor.

That bologna, though. It wasn’t that it was awful — the flavor was hot-doggy and good and matched well with the rest of it. It’s just that the texture of a giant bologna steak… it’s weird. It’s almost too tender, like meat-nougat or something. I hoped the barbecuing might mean some crispiness to the outside but that wasn’t the case.

If bologna is your thing, by all means, check this sandwich out. It’s about as good as I can imagine a bologna sandwich being. But for my money, if I’m going to Blue Smoke I’d much rather have the pulled pork or fried chicken sandwiches.