Vermont Country Deli, Brattleboro, VT

Sorry for the lapse in posts. Keepitcoming and I had a huge day yesterday, spending most of the day across the border in Vermont, and culminating the night with a fantastic concert.

We'd been wanting to check out Vermont for a while. I'd never really hung around to see what was going on there, and being a mere 30 miles from the border, wanted to see what cool things we could find there.

Most of our day was spent driving and checking out the awesome weirdness at the Vermont Country Store, but we walked around Brattleboro later on and got some fantastic sandwiches, too. The Vermont Country Deli is famous for great sandwiches, desserts, and strange groceries- three things I happen to fancy myself. While they're most notorious for their pulled pork sandwich, we were looking for something a little more portable to enjoy on the ride home.

I chose one of their specialty sandwiches, the Route 9 Roast Beef. It was roast beef, American cheese, horseradish mayonnaise, mustard, and lettuce on my choice of bread. At the recommendation of Keepitcoming, I chose the hard roll. It was very good and cushioned the sandwich well without getting overly bready or crumbly. It was like an individual challah without the egginess. I was a little disappointed that, this being Vermont, they did not offer the option of cheddar cheese. It seemed like a no-brainer, especially with roast beef.They gave a decent portion of roast beef on the sandwich, enough to spill over the edges and still lay thickly on the bread. The mustard was a little overpowering, but the horseradish in the mayo made a definite impression on the overall flavor. I really, really enjoy the combination of horseradish and roast beef. The cheese was unimpressive, and I stick to my opinion that cheddar would be fantastic in this sandwich. The butter lettuce gave a nice bitterness to the melange of salty flavors going on, and accentuated the horseradish.Keepitcoming's sandwich was on the same challah-like roll with chicken salad, lettuce, tomatoes, and alfalfa sprouts. All the vegetables were fresh and crisp. The chicken salad was a very good quality and had a nice texture, but came out tasting rather bland.The addition of dill in the salad was helpful, but did not add a lot to the overall flavor. We're spoiled by the State Street Deli, I suppose.For dessert, we shared a face-sized oatmeal raisin cookie. It was tasty, but Keepitcoming swore that they were normally much more fresh and was surprised that it was so average, especially on a holiday weekend with many patrons.It was studded with raisins and had a mildly spicy flavor, but aside from that, was a regular cookie with not a whole lot to stand upon.