For a robust diner breakfast, a handsome hamburger or a fork-tender country-fried steak with white pepper gravy, head out Bettis Academy Road beyond I-20 and find Airport Grill.
Located north of Giant Tire Parkway and Bridgestone Americas, it is named for Twin Lakes Air Park, a nearby single-strip airfield that straddles the Aiken/Edgefield county line.
Burgers take center stage. While they aren't immense, they are immensely satisfying, made of freshly ground chuck patted into beefy pillows that cook up very juicy. The grandest of them is a double bacon cheeseburger piled to the rafters with condiments and garnishes. A more modest option is the burger melt: a single patty, melted American cheese and grilled onions between slices of Texas toast.
Chili is available to top the burgers and just about anything else on the menu. It is so fetchingly sweet that it makes me think of western North Carolina barbecue sauce. The beefy brew sings harmony on a hamburger and is especially welcome on a hot dog when combined with chopped onions and cole slaw.
Chili also is a fitting complement on a plate of crinkle-cut French fries. Get them loaded and they come bedecked with curls of bacon and melting cheese. Or you can have home fries, meaning French fries that are cut here in the kitchen. They are like soft logs of baked potato enriched by the time they've spent in bubbling hot oil.
Morning hash browns resemble a little spuddy hay flake with a crisped surface. They're fundamental to a top-of-the-line "Sunrise Breakfast" of eggs, a biscuit, a thick slab of griddle-sizzled bologna (or bacon or sausage, if you prefer) and a couple of pancakes.
I am torn between recommending breakfast or lunch as the better time to visit. As noted, artfully dressed hamburgers are stand-outs. They are the featured attraction at lunch as well as at dinner.
On the other hand, conversation at breakfast often evolves into a gleeful verbal lunge and parry party conducted by patrons and staff. It's a happy morning to be here at sunrise, drinking coffee from one of the miscellaneous collection of souvenir mugs and enjoying the badinage. Even if the breakfast menu doesn't strive to offer anything more than stalwart hash house fare, a visit to Airport Grill can be a rousing way to start the day.
This humble diner is worth noting also for its daily special: tenderloin tips. Chunks of tender beef come in a heap of sautéed onions and red and green peppers, glazed with flavorful brown gravy. At $13.99, the tips cost twice as much as a deluxe hamburger. That makes sense because they are in a culinary class beyond burgers and blue plate specials.
Airport Grill is popular among blue collar and white collar men and women who tend the awesome industry all around. Many of them come for take-out fare to bring back to colleagues. Some days, you won't find a single ordinary car parked out front. Every vehicle is a pickup truck. There's even space in the broad lot for eighteen wheelers.
Airport Grill: 1301 Bettis Academy Rd., Trenton, SC. 803-663-7006
