Toronto is littered with restaurants that are oh-so-pretty but fail to back up their design-forward facades by delivering the goods on the plate. They’ve got the kitsch-cool logo and the fancy, media-savvy tag-lines, but the food — well it often just flat-out sucks. So walking into Reggie’s Old Fashioned Sandwiches, a funky little shop that took up residence beside Craft Burger over on King West a couple of months ago, I was prepared to be suitably unimpressed. The sturdy wooden tables and bare brick walls? Yeah, they’re cool. The nifty zip-line my cashier uses to scoot my chit over to the kitchen? That’s cute too. And so what if the Ramones are playing over the stereo system? So you have good taste in music — does the good taste translate as well into your food? Answer: damn straight it does.

Biting into a Homer (Simpson, not the Greek guy)-sized hamburger bun stuffed to the max with caramelized onions, real mozzarella cheese and lusciously braised pulled pork ($6.95), I’m think: finally, a 24-hour joint you don’t have to be drunk to appreciate. Heat? It’s there, provided by a not-too-boozy Southern Comfort BBQ sauce. Sweetness? You’ve got that too, but it’s balanced well by the savoury goodness of paprika and spices. In short, this is a keeper.

So is the Philly Cheese Steak ($7.55), a demi-pain loaded with soft peppers, onions and tender strips of Rowe Farms sirloin, despite the fact that the promised mozzarella fails to turn up in the actual sandwich I’m served. Duck confit ($7.55) is closer to just plain roasted duck — lacking woefully in the oozing-fat department. Topped with a whack of silky Brie, thin-sliced green apple, and cherry tomatoes, though, this bird still rocks.

You may note that the ingredients listed thus far don’t really scream healthy living. This is, of course, because the fare at Reggie’s most certainly isn’t. Deep fried, breaded mac ’n’ cheese sticks ($5.55) — neat, my six year old loved ’em — are better than anything KFC is putting out, but add grease to an already fat-laden dish. Passable poutine ($3.95), with curds and a somewhat gummy roux-based gravy, isn’t going to lower your cholesterol count. And a salad of mixed greens — jumped up with split grapes, super-salt-tastic toasted cashews, and grated, aged white cheddar in zippy mustard dressing ($6.95) — is not what you’d call light.

What Reggie’s is offering, however, is real, honest-to-goodness food. Shreds of moist roasted bird, matched with crisp bacon, copious amounts of mayo and not-bad tomatoes on the club ($7.95), come from a naturally raised chicken. Toasted foccacia, used to swaddle a mess of roasted zucchini, eggplant and peppers with provolone in the veg sandwich ($6.95), has both taste and substance formidable enough to match the pungent sun-dried tomato pesto it gets slathered with. And the pile of mushy meat they’re calling corned beef ($7.55)? Well this is the one sandwich I’m not a fan of, but at least they’re making it in-house.

By the time I’ve finished a small slab of carrot cake ($3.75 — made in-house of course) with plump raisins and ultra-smooth cream-cheese icing for dessert, I’m ready to admit it — I’m impressed. It’s been a while since a fast-food joint has got it so right on so many levels as has Reggie’s. Lick’s did it for hamburgers back in the ’80s. Likewise Burrito Boys with rice-and- bean wraps just under a decade ago. And if Reggie’s keeps going strong (which, judging from the midnight line-ups, they will), no doubt the T.O. sandwich revolution won’t be far behind. To which I have three words: bring it on.