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Cleared For Lunching: The $100 Hamburger

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By MATTHEW PREUSCH, The New York Times

Published: October 29, 2007

It's called hunting the $100 hamburger - '$100' referring to the cost of fuel - sort of the aeronautical equivalent of lazy Sunday drives in which the destination isn't as important as the pleasure of getting away. The thrill level, though, is just a bit higher than that of tooling through the New England countryside in fall foliage season.

One recent Saturday afternoon, for example, Bryan Hennessy banked his Citabria above Orcas Island, setting up the single-engine plane for its final approach to the quiet airstrip at the apex of Orcas, a horseshoe-shaped island northwest of Seattle.

His son Parker, 8, knew that once the Citabria's wheels squealed and skipped on the runway, ice-cream time was near. 'Every time we get in the plane, Parker says, 'I want to go for ice cream,'' said Hennessy, an electrical engineer who lives in Anacortes, Wash. 'He loves it.'

Parker isn't the only one. Each weekend, hundreds of pilots, mostly middle-aged men such as Hennessy, fuel their single-engine Citabrias and Columbias and Cessnas and set out in search of a meal or dessert.

'I don't think you can ever explain how much fun it is to just hop in a plane, fly somewhere and hop out and eat,' said Dave Sturm, who flies his single-engine Piper Comanche 260 from his home in Dundee, Ore., to airport restaurants throughout the Northwest.

Thousands Of Destinations

You don't have to own a plane to bask in the singular ambience of the hunt for the $100 hamburger. Beyond the country's frenetic commercial airports, there are thousands of regional airstrips, some little more than a swatch of grass and an orange windsock - and you can drive up to them. (Of the country's nearly 20,000 landing facilities, from seaplane bases to LaGuardia Airport, about 500 cater to commercial airlines.) And many of these out-of-the-way airports still have cafes and restaurants right off the field, remnants from the heyday of general aviation in the '70s.

Most are classic greasy spoons where the waitresses call you Hon', and you half expect to see winged semis parked outside. But a few ambitious airport restaurateurs are opening high-end places such as Le Relais at Bowman Field in Louisville, Ky., or Jonesy's Famous Steak House at Napa County Airport in California.

'You can judge the food you are about to have by the amount of airplane decor, and they have an inverse relationship,' said John Purner, who wrote 'The $100 Hamburger: A Guide to Pilots' Favorite Fly-In Restaurants' 'The more airplane decor, the worse the food.'

To savor these restaurants fully, it's best to befriend a pilot who can be your guide - someone like Jake Ruhl, a Bend, Ore., aeronautical engineer.

A few recent flights around the Northwest in Ruhl's Cessna 170 taildragger showed that most homes of the $100 hamburger trend toward the wall-mounted-propeller variety, including Wings (yes, like the name of the 1990s sitcom) in Auburn, Calif.

And, as in any sitcom, there are archetypal characters aplenty, among them the hangar bums, who, on sunny days, sit in folding chairs next to flower planters made from old engine cylinders and watch the planes take off, land and taxi.

'There are places like that all over this country,' Ruhl said, 'where someone will bring a cooler of beer, and they'll just sit around and talk about airplanes.'

Only after patiently swapping flying stories and favorite destinations is it time to head to the on-the-field diner, most likely a place similar to the Airport Cafe, which is a few steps from the grassy taxiway that leads from the Portland-Mulino satellite airport in Oregon.

There, among the paintings of cowboys and fast cars, a short-order cook passed heaping plates of biscuits and gravy to waitresses beneath a sign that read, 'Fliers Welcome.' 'They just like our style,' Desiree Carlson, one of the waitresses, said of the customers. 'It's homey here.'

The Airport Cafe is a place where fliers rub shoulders with local office and factory workers on weekends, eating $100 omelets like the meat-filled Bogey Man, whose actual price is $8.95. Such breakfast runs are popular among residents of the country's more than 500 residential air parks.

'I think a lot of people have a group of friends where every Saturday or Sunday morning they'll go out for the $100 hamburger, the breakfast fly-out,' said Dave Sclair, a retired publisher of General Aviation News who runs Livingwithyourplane.com.

An Aeronautical Spa

Most airport cafes are part of or sit next to fixed-base operators, or FBOs, the on-the-field businesses that provide everything from fuel to flying lessons. For someone not acquainted with the cozy world of general aviation, taxiing up to an accommodating FBO can feel like a trip to an aeronautical spa. It's not unusual for an attendant to rush up and actually roll out a red carpet.

Once inside, services - mostly free - range from hot coffee and cookies to Wi-Fi-equipped lounges. Many offer courtesy cars that pilots can borrow for a run into town.

But once you consider the amount you might spend on fuel - anywhere from $100 to thousands of dollars - the borrowed sedan and the chocolate walnut cookies start to feel a bit less free. And just as rising gasoline prices discourage some people from longer road trips, so has the cost of airplane fuel, at more than $4 a gallon, put a crimp in the hunt for the $100 hamburger.

But the hamburger hunt has changed since the 1970s. The number of student pilots is less than half the level of 1980, Dancy said, and starting in the 1990s about two small airports have closed each month.

Even so, there is still a sense of romance and freedom in flying small planes, concepts long divorced from commercial travel.

You might sense it while sitting at the softly lighted bar at Jonesy's.

Jonesy's is no greasy spoon. On any weekend many millions of dollars' worth of Bombardiers, Gulfstreams and other private jets are parked wing to wing outside. And there are no toy planes dangling from the ceiling.

The special at Jonesy's is service for two: a 24-ounce sirloin complemented by white linen and crystal candleholders. Jonesy's gets its fair share of fly-in diners and earthbound tourists, but as in many airport restaurants, customers are mostly local residents.

In a tourist-heavy place like Napa Valley, the airport cafe can seem like one of the last of the hidden hangouts. Beyond the plane-gazing locals and airport-hopping pilots, most airport cafes rely on airport workers for their customer base.

But whether it's a taco, chow mein or an omelet, most pilots allow that, ultimately, the $100 hamburger isn't about the food. 'Going looking for food,' said Michael Mitchell, an engineer from Dundee, Ore., who cruises about in his Cessna 172, 'is just a reason to go flying.'

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