It was the first day of Emily Myrie’s new job at a mutual fund company in Quincy, Massachusetts, and a massive snowstorm had hit overnight. She didn’t have a car, the trains weren’t running, and it was too far to walk, so she trudged out into the blizzard to try to find a way there. With snow swirling around her, she spotted the glow of a small diner. 

It was a familiar sight: Myrie grew up on both sides of the counter at Dock Street Coffee Shop, a diner that her mother, Mary Sobel, ran in downtown Edgartown just steps away from the harborfront. As a baby, some of her first solid foods were their pancakes and home fries. At age ten, she started washing dishes at the family business. But that winter of 2014, she was twenty-four years old and had left the Island for the city. 

From inside the Quincy diner, Myrie frantically called taxis looking for a ride, but they laughed at her, saying they wouldn’t get there for at least an hour. “I’m like, ‘I’m going to be late on my first day,’” Myrie said. But then: “There’s a guy sitting at the counter eating his hash and eggs, and he turns around and he goes, ‘Excuse me, aren’t you that girl that works at Dock Street Coffee Shop? I’ve seen you grow up washing dishes there, and I’d love to give you a ride to work.’”

Thanks to the diner connection, Myrie got to her first day of work on time. As she sat at her new desk, Dock Street lingered in her mind. In time, Myrie realized she didn’t see a future at that financial company. Eventually, she left her job to come back to the Island and, in 2019, she bought the business from her mother.

It wasn’t the first time that Dock Street had been passed down to a new generation. This year marks its fiftieth year in business. While the Edgartown harborfront has evolved during that time, Dock Street has remained largely the same. That comforting reliability is what has implanted the diner so deep into the hearts of its owners and loyal customers that it’s still present, even miles away in the middle of a snowstorm. 

***

In 1975, the Vietnam War was ending, Saturday Night Live was beginning, the personal computer was introduced, and Steven Spielberg’s movie Jaws – filmed on the Island the year prior – debuted. On Martha’s Vineyard, Dock Street Coffee Shop opened its doors for the first time. 

The man that made the latter event happen is Thor Peterson. In the seventies, he and a business partner saw that one restaurant on the Island was closing and there was space available for another by the water in Edgartown. 

“We bought their equipment and brought it over,” he said. He ran Dock Street for several years until Don Patrick, who had restaurant experience at The Black Dog Tavern in Vineyard Haven and Helios in West Tisbury, took it over. Mary Sobel was a waitress there when he was ready to sell the business. In 1994, seven months pregnant with her third child, she bought it. 

The ownership changed hands but Patrick stayed on, working the grill for almost thirty years before handing the spatula over to his son, Darren. All the while, the regulars kept coming. Most of them knew and loved the brisk, no-nonsense service style that was Patrick’s calling card. They also loved the good, filling food. Only a few saw the woman newly at the helm and offered her what could politely be called advice. 

“All the local businessmen would come in and they’re looking at you like, ‘I wonder how long she’s gonna make it,’” Sobel said. But she was unfazed. What do they know, she thought. “He builds houses. He doesn’t run a restaurant.”

Sobel had a vision for Dock Street, and it was to keep things the same. Dock Street is and always has been open every day of the week, all year round, serving breakfast and lunch. To ensure this consistency, she shaped her life around the restaurant. In the early mornings, she used to drive her still-sleeping children down to the Edgartown Harbor, park the car in the shade, and leave them sleeping inside. When it was time for them to come in and help, someone would go knock on the window to wake them up.

In 2019, after working at Dock Street for thirty years and owning it for twenty-five of them, Sobel was open to selling. Myrie, with a mind for finance and a history at the restaurant, was an obvious person to pass the baton to. But it wasn’t where she’d originally imagined herself. “Me and my mom both had a dream of starting a real estate investing business,” she said, but that didn’t come together as they’d hoped. Buying Dock Street, at least at first, was a means to an end. She saw it as a way to get out of debt. Since then, however, it’s grown to mean more.

In 2023, Myrie had plans to go on a first date with a man named Shamar Myrie, but the grill broke at Dock Street and she had to cancel. “I told him, ‘I’ll probably be here all night, but if you want to stop by and say hi, you’re welcome to.’ So, I didn’t expect anything. But he dropped by just to introduce himself,” she recalled. 

They were married in 2024. Then, in January of this year, Myrie gave birth to a son named Amari. Again, a mother with a young child is at the helm, working to preserve an institution for future generations. 

***

One cool morning this June, mist crept in off Edgartown Harbor and the sky was gray. It was 6 a.m. and Dock Street wouldn’t be open for half an hour, but a few people mingled by the docks, eyeing the “closed” sign in the window. 

First, a truck parked in the lot in front of Dock Street with Red Moon Charters written on the side. Out came Cooper Fersen, of local fly-tying fame, and a man from Washington, D.C., dressed in Grundéns. Fersen was taking him out to fish. 

Then an antique red convertible, looking like it drove straight out of 1975, pulled in nearby. A man with tired eyes and a salmon-colored pullover stepped out. He walked up to the still-dark Dock Street windows and checked his watch. 

Janey Sobel got to the diner a few minutes after 6 a.m. Janey, one of Mary Sobel’s four children, graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in Cambridge in 2010 and she uses that knowledge as a grill cook. Inside, she piled potatoes into a large pot and played pop music from the 2010s on Bluetooth speakers. 

Sam Gargiulo, a waitress, came in shortly after, eating a Brazilian corn-flavored ice cream bar. “Ice cream for breakfast!” she sang. 

A little after 6:30 a.m., with the doors now open for the day, Fersen and his charge came in for coffee and egg sandwiches. When Gargiulo handed him his sandwich, she told Fersen that his egg had a double yolk. It’s good luck, she said.

“Will it help me with fishing?” Fersen asked. 

“Maybe,” she said. 

“I’ll let you know tomorrow,” he said. 

The man from the convertible came in and introduced himself as Chris Dolan, a lawyer from California who had been up all night working on a brief. He and his four siblings used to come to Dock Street on their regular trips to the Island and they’d all order the same thing: a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on an English muffin, or what’s called a bacon mac. 

“Want to hear a story about Dock Street?” he asked.

Years back, one of Dolan’s brothers died. Then, about two years ago, his other brother died. Two weeks after this second death, in the thick of grief, his sister had to come to the Island to deal with something at the house she owns here. Dolan hatched a plan: he took a red-eye flight to get to the Island ahead of her in order to procure a bacon mac from Dock Street so he could present it to her right as she came off the ferry. 

“I just stood there like this,” he said, holding an imaginary bag out in front of him, waiting for her at the terminal. “It was my way of saying, ‘Hey, I love you.’” Gargiulo came over to ask for his order. The response was obvious. 

At the small park by Edgartown Books, Dolan dedicated one of the three benches to his mother. Then, he dedicated a second bench to his brother. By the time his other brother died, someone had already claimed the third. 

When his bacon mac arrived, he held it over the plate. “You know it’s going to be good if it drips,” he said. Drops of butter fell from the sandwich. “It’ll be good.” When he finished eating, he looked down the line as the counter began to fill up with other early risers. Whether you work for a hedge fund, or you’re a lawyer, or a fisherman, it doesn’t matter, he said. “At this counter, everyone’s the same.”

Dolan left and, a short while later, an older man took his place. This was Roger Colla, Gargiulo explained. Earlier, she had informed me that he would likely stop by for breakfast: Colla has been coming to Dock Street since it opened in 1975. He often orders French toast or an egg sandwich. No one makes breakfast like they do, he said. “I think it’s the butter.” 

Elsewhere at the counter was Matt Sudarsky. “I’ve been coming in for years, watching it not change,” he said. Later, Patrick Courtney, who co-owns The Covington and The Port Hunter restaurants up the street, made use of the container of real maple syrup they keep in the cooler with his name on it. 

Throughout the morning, Gargiulo pointed out more loyal customers. He’s a regular, he’s a regular, she’d say. (Some women were there too, although the demographics that morning largely skewed male.) Later, Peterson came in from next door, where he runs Martha’s Vineyard Bike Rentals, and ordered his usual: white toast with five fried eggs, covered in cheese. 

“I’m a protein guy,” he said.

Janey managed to get all five eggs onto the plate in one go with minimal slippage. Throughout the morning, she expertly tended to the grill, while also answering questions, plating orders, and delivering them to nearby customers.

Eventually, Myrie arrived carrying several gallons of milk, sliced cheese, a bag of tomatoes, and her baby. The place runs well when she’s not there, but “it runs really well when I’m here,” she said. 

The diner means so much to so many people, she said, but it has its challenges. Luckily, the regulars often step in. Once the griddle weight, used to keep the bacon flat, needed fixing. A customer who’s a contractor took it out to his truck, repaired it, and brought it back. Another time the fridge needed to be replaced. A regular helped take the door frame off so the new fridge could fit inside. When your home, or your home away from home, needs work, you take care of it.

That’s the ethos that has preserved Dock Street, Myrie said. She’s seen how another attitude has led to the changes around her. Edgartown still hosts fishermen during the annual Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass & Bluefish Derby – the headquarters of which are located across the street – and to some degree throughout the year. But the local industries have shifted and it’s not a post-office-and-hardware-store town anymore. Now downtown Edgartown is comprised of shops that sell Vineyard-shaped jewelry, Vineyard sweatshirts, and items for your “tablescape.” 

“Once the tourists were really heavy coming in, nobody could get to those necessary services, and they all moved out to The Triangle,” the fork where Beach Road and the Edgartown–Vineyard Haven Road meet, Myrie said. “Downtown kind of just became for walking around tourists.” In the winter, there isn’t much foot traffic or passers-by because many of those essential businesses moved away. “So, I guess it just feels like it’s not attainable for local commerce.”

She compared Edgartown to Mykonos, the Greek island overrun by visitors and Instagram influencers. “It’s just Airbnbs for tourists, which is kind of how I feel like you lose the soul in a place, right? It’s like, ‘Oh, this is such a pretty flower!’ And then you pick it, and it’s dead.”

With all the change going on around it, Myrie is trying to preserve the soul of Dock Street, while also adapting with the times. Sobel, who still helps out from time to time, described needing to clean the wooden menu boards that hang on the wall. She recently lifted the stickers with the new higher prices on the menu, which showed the earlier prices she had hand-painted decades ago, and cleaned underneath. Myrie said that they try to keep their prices low, but rising expenses force them to follow suit. In the mid-eighties, the number two – two eggs with home fries, toast, and coffee or tea – was under four dollars, Sobel said. Now it costs twelve dollars.  

Down the line, if the right buyer came along, Myrie might consider selling. But, for now, the diner is still like a second home. That morning, she tended to Amari at the counter. Not far away, there was a framed snapshot of her behind the same counter as a kid, when she started on dish duty. 

“Something me and my husband talk about a lot is building a legacy,” she said. “Neither of my parents went to college and then I was able to get almost a full scholarship. I’m just hoping that I can piggyback off what my mom built, and then Amari can piggyback off what I built. Whatever his passions are, I just hope that I’m stable enough and fortunate enough to be able to drive that passion. But he’ll have to start on dish like everybody else.”

That’s where a good work ethic is developed, she said. In the meantime, Amari hasn’t started eating solid foods. When he does, there will be some house specialties, perfected over the generations, waiting for him to try.