Review Duke Street Sandwich Bar and Deli Truro

Its forty past midday, you're in Zone One, you're hungry. But at One O'Clock you have that meeting about the orphanage fundraiser. Options. You need options:

• You could go to the Co-op and get a sandwich, but if you did that you would be being mean to yourself.
  
• You could go to The Truro Coffee house and get some of their yummy food, but can you risk the wait? If you miss that meeting... orphans will die.
• Or you could go to one of the sandwich shops.....
  

So put your Snickers and pack of Discos back on the shelf, walk out of the Co-op and into the heart of the city's trendiest quarter. Lo! There, 'pon a trice of thoroughfares 'midst the shadows of spires be the Duke Street Sandwhich Bar and Deli. Rejoice, for ye hath found thine luncheon salvation.

Unlike the Co-op, you don't get much for a quid fifty in the Duke Street Deli, maybe a can of drink and a Tide Table. But if you can up the ante, if you can show momma who's really greasing the skillet, say, to between two pounds fifty and four pounds fifty, then my dear reader, you have found what you are looking for.

Anyways, rather than waffle on... I'll stop showing off in front of my friends and lay down the low down on why the this one wins the show-down:


The Food

The ingredients... yea, yea, whatever... they are all locally sourced and organic and fair trade and all that green razzmatazzZ that we expect nowadays. I'm not dissing that, but as well as being green ingredients, they are great ingredients. Stuff you haven't heard of. Stuff you haven't thought of. Stuff you haven't considered with other stuff. Stuff you have heard of but thought it was something else - I always thought alfalfa was a metaphor for agrarian poverty.

Goats cheese and cow cheese and this and that and crab or salmon and that and.... alfalfa . You can have bread with bits and relishes to relish. Its all good and seems so good for you. Fresh and rich like......

IP Issues

My Only Concern with this place is that they casually imply you can combine their ingredients within a "make your own" framework. That's fine. But these guys have a lot of ingredients in their arsenal, raising the question:

What happens if you stumble upon a groundbreaking sandwich combination? Who owns the rights to that combination? You or the deli?

I would love to have the chance to come up with the next brie and cranberry, but not until the establishment that I use as my "lab" adheres to this creative commons license. When it comes to free-form sandwich experimentation, if you're going to play at the perimiter, you had better play fair.

Enough on The Food, How's the Mood?


You know how when you see alcoholics queueing for free beer? Well that's what this place can get like at lunch time. Storming the Baguette Bastille. As good as their food is, I never go in there then.

"Do you want butter on that?"

And then there are the quiet times. When you can sit in the big frosted window, drink coffee and just chill as Truro Z1 drifts by outside. Read a free paper on the chunky oak stool-counter and listen to the melodious hum of the chiller cabinet, intercepted only occasionally by the star-chime ping of a grill timer.




Conclusion

I have been taking notes in my head for this review for nigh on three months, as well as eating lunch in or from other places, and I can say, categorically, that the Duke Street Sandwhich Shop is the best sandwhich shop in Truro. In the pecking order, its the Alfalfa Meal (ED - Thats a really crap gag. delete?)

Am I biased? Probably, but I'm only biased because I'm right: If you can find a better deli/sandwich bar/shop-what-have-you, in Truro in 2007, then I'll wear an alfalfa and Cornish bacon ball-gown to the high-school prom. Chase me!

Duke Street Sandwich Bar and Deli
10 Duke Street
City of Truro
TR1 2QE
Tel: 01872 320025