Phantom Gourmet: The Depot Street Tavern In Milford

MILFORD (CBS) -- Sometimes the best restaurants aren't fancy or fussy--they're just ridiculously delicious and incredibly affordable, which is what you'll experience at the Depot Street Tavern.

Tucked away in the town of Milford, the Depot Street Tavern is the kind of place usually only the locals know about. But when the food is this good, word gets around.

"Everything is hand made fresh, local as we can be," says owner Adam Hicks. "We don't assemble here, we cook. And the people that we have working here are the people who are passionate about what they do and passionate about food ... It's just basic good food."

Hicks opened this place a couple years ago. He filled the menu with the kind of food he likes to eat, and decorated the dining room with the kind of stuff he likes to look at.

"All the decor is a useless collection of my junk over the past few years," says Hicks. "Everything that I had in my house that my girlfriend wouldn't let me have, she said, 'bring it to the restaurant.' We brought it to the restaurant, we hung it on the wall, it's an eclectic mixture of street signs, bar signs, antiques, Jimmy Buffett signs, just a fun place to come hang out, have a beer, have something good to eat."

There are inventive appetizers like Parmesan polenta sticks with lemon herb aioli, comfort food clasics like pasta bolognese, char grilled steak tips, and all kinds of sandwiches--or as they're known here, 'handhelds.'

"We call them handhelds, because you pick it up and you eat it with your hands," says Hicks. "There's no forks, there's no knives, you just dig right in."

Basically, the Depot Street Tavern is the kind of place where customers just feel like they're at home, and that's probably because Adam feels that way too.

"This is my home, this is my life, everything we do is right here," he says. "This is the way that I want to live, this is the way I see the world is through this restaurant. And if I would do it in my house, I would do it here."

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