After a few unsatisfying attempts I asked the bartender to just pour a glass of the house Cabernet Sauvignon, which was much better. I wouldn’t ordinarily make it a point to complain - I almost never drink wine in airport lounges - except that Amex made wine such a central feature of this location. I tasted a few to see if they actually did manage to make the Napa thing work. I grew up near the Santa Cruz mountains and he now lives in the Sonoma Valley.) The adjacent Sonoma Valley to the west and the Santa Cruz Mountains to the south both produce equally excellent wine and could have been added to the list while retaining the concept of local cuisine. My dad likes to say, “NAPA makes auto parts.”ĭifferent regions are better at producing different kinds of wine due to their respective growing conditions, and the Bay Area has tons of unique microclimates. It seems to me like someone at Amex decided “Napa” has the most cachet so they should make sure all the wine came from there to improve the image of the lounge.Īnother opinion is that they have a few good wines and a lot of mediocre wine. (Go back and ask for additional tickets if you wish).īut if there’s one major flaw in this lounge, it’s the wine selection. A stack of small glasses means you can taste several wines together. Ask the bartender for a ticket, which you can scan for five separate tastes of about 1-1.5 ounces. They have a few house wines available by the glass at the bar as well as wine dispenser along the opposite wall you can visit for smaller tastings. There wasn’t anything that really spoke to me on this cocktail menu, so I stuck to wine. When I pass through Dallas, I always get the Blue Door. You can even watch them make the food in an open kitchen.ĭrinks are important too. The menu included such options as roasted pork with leeks and fennel, pumpkin cooked in goats’ milk butter, and fermented and grilled mushrooms (everyone I’ve heard who tried the mushrooms thought they were awesome). I even recognized that a reader was at the SFO location a few weeks later when he posted a photo just because I remembered the food. For example, they each have a specialty cocktail menu and a different food menu that emphasize local cuisine. One thing I appreciate about the Centurion Lounges is that they make an effort to make each location a bit unique. Overly helpful check-in aside, it’s a good escape from the terminal. I wanted to walk away, but she still had my phone. It was the longest check-in experience I’ve had at any lounge, and this was before she started to go into all the amenities they offer. She stared at it forever before speaking, and finally started giving me a point-by-point list of my airline, flight number, departure time, and gate - information already listed on my boarding pass. The lounge agent looked scanned the boarding pass on my phone and then proceeded to look up my flight information. But there’s such a thing as being too friendly. They were trying to show it off to people who maybe hadn’t visited other Centurion Lounges before. Check-in was very welcoming, as you’d expect for a new space. When I fly through Dallas, I can easily take the Skylink (and often need to anyway to make my connecting flight).Īll guests enter downstairs at the departures level and take the stairs or the elevator to go up to the mezzanine. My opinion is that overcrowding won’t be too much of an issue going forward since United has its own, more convenient club and the relative difficulty re-clearing security will discourage people from visiting if they are departing in other terminals. Though it felt smaller than other locations, it was not crowded during our visit and has many other virtues, my favorite of which was the West Coast cuisine - I’m getting a little tired of the Tex Mex BBQ in Dallas. (On this particular trip since we were flying on Alaska Airlines out of Concourse A.) Located near Gate 74 in United’s F Concourse, this lounge is also available to international passengers traveling through Concourse G, which mostly serves Star Alliance, thanks to a nearby airside bridge that connects these terminals. Passengers on most other carriers will need to exit and re-clear security. Miami is not yet open, and I discussed previously the location of a smaller Centurion Studio opening soon in Seattle. However, today’s post covers the most recent addition: a new Centurion Lounge opened in San Francisco at the beginning of November. I have reviews of the Las Vegas and Dallas locations queued up and will pass through La Guardia in a couple weeks.
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