Black-Eyed Susan’s | Local Flavor

Picture a diner—let’s say in Laconia or Worcester or Bangor. It’s small and, despite the florescent lights and chrome and Formica, cozy. Maybe it’s the smells that make it cozy, or the familiarity. There are eggs and hashbrowns on the griddle and servers juggling plates. Customers are unfussy, hunched over stoneware mugs of coffee, wearing flannel, jeans, beards. This is the archetypal diner, but it’s a real place you’ll find in towns from Stamford, Connecticut, to Irasburg, Vermont. Now consider Black-Eyed Susan’s in Nantucket’s busy cobblestone district, which, for many summer visitors, constitutes the closest thing to a diner. (The Downeyflake, located mid-island, is diner-esque in spirit, but café-like in layout.) There are eggs and hashbrowns on the griddle, and framing the grill is a long counter where customers sit on chrome pedestal stools. They, too, are hunched over mugs of coffee and unfussy in their own way. But here in the land of the One Percenters, that means gingham instead of flannel, crisp denim shorts precisely cuffed, and two-day beards. An actress-pretty blonde at a table near the opposite wall isn’t wearing makeup, but she keeps her big black sunglasses on, despite the dim light. Men are scruffier in the island uniform of Nantucket Red shorts and old regatta T-shirts. Here, donning the costume seems to be the way movers and shakers downshift into island mode.

The restaurant is closed for lunch—without air conditioning, it’s too hot midday—but at dinner, it morphs into a bistro serving upscale dishes such as linguini with local quahogs ($18 for a half portion) and “Swordfish au Poivre on French Green Lentils, Roasted Field Tomato, Garlic & Pistachio Romesco Sauce, Maitre d’hotel Butter, Chervil” ($27). Owners Susan Handy and Jack Worster also own the beloved French restaurant Chanticleer over in ’Sconset, and Worster has serious chops to exercise, even at this little lunch counter.

So Black-Eyed Susan’s is a diner and it isn’t. Instead of chrome lights, there are amethyst cut-glass chandeliers. But in the morning, we’ll brave the line (or get up early) to dig into a breakfast of eggy Pennsylvania Dutch–style pancakes with Jarlsberg cheese and real maple syrup. Or the thick-cut French toast made with Worster’s own sourdough. Or huevos rancheros under a pool of creamy just-hot-enough chile sauce. On warm summer mornings, the heat from the grill can blast customers away from the counter stools, but it’s a great place to watch the action and chat with the staffers, who, like most seasonal workers here, hail from Jamaica, Eastern Europe, and Central America. They speak in Spanish and lilting English, juggling orders and egg pans. “How do you stand the heat?” I ask one cook as he plates an egg scramble with linguiça. He smiles as he searches for the words. “Very,” he says.

Out in the alleyway between the restaurant and the art gallery next door, two lucky families are soaking up the shade at tables on the makeshift patio area. There’s a cool breeze and those pancakes, fresh off the griddle. Who cares how many houses the guy sitting next to you owns? Everyone gets a taste of the good life here. Black- Eyed Susan’s. 10 India St., Nantucket, MA. Open April–October. 508-325-0308; black-eyedsusans.com