In recent years, airport food has been greatly improving. Some airports are offering gourmet and high-end food while others have what I like to call higher-end fast food.
We used to always bring lots of snacks and sometimes even a small meal to eat while waiting for our flights to take off, but these days it might be worth checking out what the airport has to offer in terms of tasty, sometimes gourmet food.
(Check out Eater’s Airport Dining Guides to find out the best of what some airports have to offer.)
Conde Nast Traveler recently had a slideshow with The Best Airport Food in the World.
To come up with their top picks for airport food, CNTraveler asked their “network of trusted travelers with very discriminating palates (Daniel Boulud, Jamie Bissonnette, and Dominique Ansel among them) what restaurants and bars they’ve discovered on the way to the gate“.
I’m wouldn’t consider myself to be a five-star restaurant kind of guy, so I didn’t expect that I would have had visited any of the places that made the cut.
Anyway, here are the restaurants and airports which CNTraveler picked as having the Best Airport Food in the World:
- Dallas/ Ft Worth (DFW): Cousin’s Bar-B-Q- pulled pork and brisket
- Boston Logan (BOS): Legal Sea Foods- airport breakfast
- New York (JFK): The Palm Bar & Grille- burger or steak & Uptown Brasserie- fried chicken or meatballs
- San Francisco (SFO)- Fung Lum- roast duck noodles, Cat Cora’s Kitchen- oysters, grilled artichoke and saffron mussel penne pasta and Yankee Pier- clam chowder & seafood salad
- Hatsfield-Jackson Atlanta (ATL): One Flew South- Southern food and the wine list
- Nashville (BNA): Yazoo Brewing Company- draft beer (to have with your BBQ)
- Las Vegas (LAS): Metro Pizza- pepperoni pizza (I wanted to try out their pizza but Kim and I decided to head over to the Amex Centurion Lounge instead)
- Washington Dulles (IAD): Matsutake Sushi- deep-fried soft-shell crab
- Miami (MIA): La Carreta- vaca frita
- General Mitchell, Milwaukee (MKE): Northpoint Custard- beer-broiled Johnsville brat and cheese curds
- LaGuardia, New York (LGA): Bisoux- poached chicken salad with ratatouille, hard boiled egg and pesto.
- London, Heathrow (LHR): Carluccio’s- eggs and Gordon Ramsay’s Plane Food- butter chicken curry with fried chickpea rice. (there are also other restaurants mentioned)
- Singapore Changi (SIN): Kampong Cafe- chilli crabs
- Santos Dumont, Rio (SDU) & Congonhas- Sao Paulo (CGH): Casa do Pao de Queijo- Brazilian cheese bread
- Hong Kong (HKG): Maxim’s- dim sum (Kim and I ate at their restaurant in HK and it was an excellent and memorable meal.)
- Narita, Tokyo (NRT): Sushi Kyotatsu- sushi and Sanbei- zaru soba with tororo
- Rome Fiumicino (FCO): Colosseum- porchetta roll
- Dubai International (DBX): Cadiz Tapas- wine?
- Venice Marco Polo Airport (VCE): Rustichelli & Mangione- mozzarella pomodoro pane tostato
- Cam Ranh, Vietnam (CXR): Ad Coffee Cafe- syrupy Vietnamese coffee & cappuchino
- Suvarnabhumi, Bangkok (BKK): Miracle Food Village- sticky rice with mango and Kin Ramen- Thai seafood soup without noodles
and The Winner:
- Chicago O’Hare (ORD): Tortas Frontera by Rick Bayless: various chefs named Tortas Fronteras as the best for a variety of Mexican dishes.
My Picks:
Like I stated earlier in this post, I tend to favor high-end fast food and I’m not talking about McNuggets served on a silver platter.
My ideal meal at an airport could be found at JFK’s T4. To me, you can’t go wrong eating Shake Shack! And, the best part about this location is that they serve breakfast- the only locations in the mini-chain to do so! I recently tried both of their egg sandwiches and they did not disappoint.
I’ve also enjoyed grabbing a quick meal from Chic fil A a bunch of times when going through Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport!
What are your favorite places to dine at the airport? If you’ve been to any of the places that made CNTraveler’s list , let us know what it was like.
Find out more about each of the best airports to grab some food at in the CNTraveler article here. (FYI- Some airports had more than the 1-2 places that I included.)
