Austere and filled with banal pre-coffee turpitude, I cruised over to the Plane View restaurant to meet my colleagues for the day’s first and most important meal. It’s tucked into the recesses of the Martha’s Vineyard Airport, and I was expecting a light jaunt from my home, a mere 23-second drive from the restaurant, but was instead met with vexation at the rattling sound my car makes, the layer of pollen not doing any favors for my allergies, and the realization I would have to get out of my car, walk back to my house, unlock my door, and get the wallet I had forgotten on my desk.
Inside Plane View, the windows open the seating area to the airport’s runway, making one feel like Amelia Earhart, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, or Porco Rosso ready to soar the skies in a biplane.
My meal began with a cup of hot coffee ($2.99) and carried me with gratis refills until the end. At many breakfast establishments, there is an unabridged dish on the menu. You know the one. It’s a smorgasbord of eggs, bacon, cheese, toast, and sausage. It goes by many names –– Truck Stop Special, All American, Broadway Breakfast, Old Faithful. The Plane View’s rendition of this is the aptly named B-52 Bomber ($10.29), which, with a side of home fries ($3.29), began our breakfast of champions.
Caroline, the new Times photo intern, ordered the French Toast ($9.29), three thick slices of bread, dipped in an egg-cellent mixture, grilled to a golden brown, and covered with fresh strawberries.
Gabrielle, Times photographer extraordinaire, elected to try the Short Stack Buttermilk Pancakes ($7.29). What it lacks in height it more than makes up for in diameter. It’s dusted in powdered sugar and topped with berries — how could you not order that?
Our final dish was the Fruit Bowl ($10.99), classic, elegant, regal. An amalgam of strawberries, blueberries, watermelon, pineapple, cantaloupe, granola, and yogurt.
Unfortunately, I could only eat so much in one sitting, my stomach allowing me only to look at the other menu options with longing.
Viand-keen artificers will take delight in the build-your-own omelet ($9.99) option — including coffee, home fries, and toast — which can be stuffed with bacon, ham, sausage, linguica, onions, mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes, American, Swiss, or Cheddar cheese.
The Plane View doesn’t stop at breakfast, either. The Chicken and Cheese Quesadilla ($10.29), Hot Pastrami Sandwich ($10.29), and the Garden Salad ($6.99) are all lunch options served after 11:30 am. Did I mention the Plane View Burger ($9.59)? You can add bacon too ($1).
The Plane View is less of a place where you go to eat food and more of a place where you experience food. Go on an easy Sunday morning, when breakfast is served from 7 am until 2 pm.
Or just play hooky from work. Too often we exist only as a mass of molecules floating through space, not taking the unfamiliar step outside our daily, weekly, monthly, yearly routine. Don’t settle for mere existence, get out there and live, get out there and forge in your spirit the most powerful of mana, get out there and eat at the Plane View restaurant and let your taste buds, in tandem with your soul, take flight.
The Plane View restaurant is open seven days a week, 7 am to 3 pm. Starting June 23 through Sept. 5, Plane View will be open 7 am to 7 pm. Dinner is added to the menu from May to September. For more information, call 508-693-1886 or go online at mvyairport.com/dining.
