TOM ANGLEBERGER Special to The Roanoke Times

Behind the boards and cracked glass, Blacksburg's Sycamore Deli makes a heck of a sandwich.

Tom Angleberger knows what he likes. So we've asked him to eat at NRV restaurants and write about them. If you have a restaurant to recommend, e-mail him.

Tom Angleberger

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The Sycamore Deli is a college sandwich shack.

True, I saw plenty of people there who couldn't pass as college students anymore. But the restaurant itself makes no pretensions of being anything more than a college joint. It's decorated in splotchy paint, dozens of baseball caps and a life-size cardboard lady with an exposed belly button. Right behind my booth there was an open trash can. The place is falling apart. The glass in the front door is busted. Ditto the paneling, some of the seats and a sink that is, for some reason, in the dining area.

And they shouldn't change a thing -- except maybe the belly button.

College students need a place like this, a place with a little character, so their memories aren't all franchise-related. And so do the rest of us.

There were so many unusual things about the Sycamore Deli, that it took me a few tries to get it right. First of all, you fill out your own order ticket. To do that, you must study a wall of words. The menu isn't available on paper -- I asked -- it's only on dozens of color-coded sheets of paper stuck to the wall. Each sheet describes a different sandwich, some with funny names. There are melts and bagels and pitas and subs and wraps and enchiladas. There's the Pop, the Warner and the Pee Wee. There's the Letterman, the Koppel and the Chevy. The Romeo, the Juliet and on and on.

The Rachel, for example, is roast beef, Russian dressing, coleslaw and Swiss cheese on pumpernickel. The Benson is salami, ham and pepperoni with banana peppers and provolone.

You may need some time to sort through it all; I sure did. (If you want to plan ahead, you can look at the menu online at CampusFood.com.)

Eventually, I settled on the Mini-Me: sliced steak and garlic with hot sauce and cheese.

See, this is what I like. Somebody invented this sandwich. I didn't have to build my own or rattle off a list of toppings. I wrote down "Mini-Me" and they made me a fantastic sandwich. Absolutely delicious.

Someday, someone might come in here, streamline the menu, fix all the busted stuff and make it all a lot more respectable. And that would be a crime.

Bottom line: The Sycamore Deli is perfectly imperfect.