Phantom Gourmet: The Plate In Milton

MILTON (CBS) – The Phantom Gourmet visited a popular cafe in Milton that's known for serving hand-crafted comfort food

Suzanne Lombardi is a chef who always has a lot on her plate.

She shops daily for the finest and freshest local produce.  She crafts gourmet sandwiches by hand.  And she pours her heart into her craft at The Plate in Milton.

"The Plate is a small kitchen doing handcrafted comfort food with a team of people who are really excited about cooking and food," Lombardi explained. "And hopefully they come in and they ee us working and they see the produce we're working with and it's just a really nice atmosphere."

"When you walk in there's a big counter that was really designed to showcase all of our food outside of a case," she said. "They're gonna see a lot of fresh baked goods. We really go the extra mile to make everything in-house."

She really does mean everything.  They make the English muffins and cinnamon donuts from scratch.  Sandwiches are filled with farm-fresh roasted beets and house-made ricotta, or oven-baked turkey meatloaf with house-made curried apricot ketchup.

There's even a gourmet grilled-cheese sandwich with a smoky paprika tomato soup and an incredible Southern-style biscuit sandwich.

"It's made fresh every day. Classic buttermilk biscuit. You have to have a really special sort of hand to keep them delicate," Lombardi said. "It's layered with some house-made red pepper jelly, a wedge of local sharp cheddar cheese and some locally smoked ham."

From mac and cheese to chicken salad to French almond brioche, nothing ends up your plate if it isn't simple, fresh and tasty at The Plate.

"I think you'll hear a lot of chefs say that if you start with good ingredients there's not a lot you need to do to it," said Lombardi. " We definitely try to do that."

Watch Phantom Gourmet on Saturdays and Sundays at 10:30 and 11 a.m. on myTV38.

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