New Town Deli

A nice mild day, with periods of beautiful sunshine replaced the biting wintry cold of the early part of the week. Oh, but then there was the wind. The 90 mph wind. Ignoring the warnings of “abandon all hope all ye who seek to travel in Scotland, today”, I took a little stroll down to Broughton Street, to continue my exploration of their sandwich shops and takeouts.

So far, Broughton Street has served me very well. It offers a strong, diverse range of take-out places that bounce off each other to drive up quality. Each place has strengths and weaknesses, but operating together they create a vibrant set of choices. The trick is to match your requirements and mood to the right place, each time.

For everyday quality, I think Crolla’s is the place. The a cool hangout, try the Broughton Deli. For quick sustenance on the go, take yourself along to Chequers. Where does the New Town Deli fit in to this continuum? Well, I think it’s the place where you go to give yourself a treat, as I was very impressed with it, on my visit.

As I’ve said, the weather was a touch brisk, so maybe this accounted for the place being a little quiet, but I was delighted to see it so, as I was served almost immediately. The first thing that I noticed was a distinct lack of prices next to the items detailed on the various blackboards. As it turned out, the prices were a little higher than the other venues I’d tried, but not prohibitively so, so I’m not sure what the thinking was with that.

Anyhoo, I was in soup and sandwich mood, so selected a roll from the good choice of freshly baked goods on their shelf, and turned my attention to their deli counter.

They had an excellent array of fillings, save for their cheese. This seems to be an issue that many of the places in the neighbourhood suffer from. To be fair, they had lovely looking mozzarella, but their other cheeses were of the thinly sliced variety. Accordingly, I settled upon a pastrami and egg mayo roll, with salad. I added to this a bowl of their soup of the day: lentil and sweet potato.

After being gently buffeted up the road, I sat at my desk and turned my attention to the soup. Upon tasting the first spoonful from the generous bowl, I was transported to one of my favourite happy places. Nothing brings a smile to my face quite like a cardamom-infused broth. It was absolutely delightful. It’s place as the fourth soup elevated to the “exceptional” level of the Lunch Quest Soup League Table (soon to be a feature on our revamped site) was guaranteed.

The roll was also very good. I’d chosen a large, white Italian roll, and it was well stuffed with filling. The salad was particularly good, and the egg mayo very nicely seasoned. With the peppered crust of pastrami adding further pods of zing, it really was tremendously enjoyable.

I’d heartily recommend the New Town Deli to you. It is more expensive than its neighbours, but the quality is very high. As I said before, I’d think of this more as a “one-in-a-while” place, as it’s a considerable treat for your palette, but I can imagine how others would get very attached to regularly sampling from its pleasing selection of goodness.

Scores

Blythe scores the New Town Deli:
4.5/5 for food
3/5 for presentation
3/5 for service
3/5 for setting
giving an overall 13.5/20

Today’s lunch quester was: Blythe

I ate: lentil and sweet potato soup, pastrami, egg mayo and salad roll

I drank: nothing

I wore: gale retardant garments

Total bill: £4.85