The 10 Best Airport Restaurants That Are Actually Good
2024-12-25 · 5 min read
Airport food has been terrible for so long that we accepted it as inevitable. Then chefs realized that captive audiences with expense accounts represent a real market, and everything changed. The best airport restaurants now rival what you would find in the cities they serve, minus the Uber surge to get there.
One Flew South in Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson is the standard bearer. It has been serving sushi-grade fish and craft cocktails in Concourse E since 2008. The hamachi crudo is genuinely excellent. You are eating it surrounded by gate announcements and rolling luggage, and somehow it still works.
Tortas Frontera by Rick Bayless at Chicago O'Hare brings the James Beard Award winner's Mexican cooking to Terminal 1 and Terminal 3. The tortas are built with the same ingredients and care as his sit-down restaurants. The guacamole is made fresh. In an airport. That should not be possible, but here we are.
Cat Cora's Kitchen at San Francisco International brings Mediterranean flavors to Terminal 2, while The Dutch at JFK's Terminal 4 offers Andrew Carmellini's take on American comfort food. In Portland, Laurelwood Brewing has a full taproom in PDX that pours locally brewed beer that is better than what most cities offer in their bar districts.
Internationally, Caviar House and Prunier at London Heathrow serves champagne and caviar at Terminal 2. The Wine Bar by Jose Andres at Washington Dulles brings the famous chef's Spanish sensibility to a space most people just pass through. Even Singapore Changi, which has an entire butterfly garden, features hawker-style stalls that serve legitimate laksa and chicken rice.
