American Express Centurion Lounge New York LaGuardia Review

I was sure I was lost.  I wasn’t sure if I was in LaGuardia or an office building.  Had I been arrested?  No, not this time at least.  I was on my way to the newest and best part of the LGA experience: the American Express Centurion Lounge.

I’ve previously reviewed the Centurion Lounge at DFW and posited that it was one of the nicest lounges in America.  How would the new LaGuardia lounge stack up?  Let’s find out.

For those of you who haven’t been to LaGuardia, imagine someone looking at garbage dump and saying “Yep, we should put an airport there.”  “Ok I agree, as long as it can be unorganized and generally shoddy.”  “Deal.”

LaGuardia has four terminals: A, B, C, and D.  Most of you will never use Terminal A, that’s the Marine Air Terminal and cargo branches of the airlines (although I believe Delta may have a shuttle service that runs from there).  Terminal B has quite a few airlines in it and is organized horribly.  Terminal B has four concourses, that are also lettered.  Terminal B Concourse A houses JetBlue, Air Canada, and United Express.  Terminal B Concourse B houses AirTrain, Frontier, JetBlue, Southwest, and Spirit.  Terminal B Concourse C houses American Eagle, United, United Express, and Virgin.  Last but not least, Terminal B Concourse D houses American.  What I hate about Terminal B is security is at the beginning of each concourse, so if you want to go to the Admiral’s Club (located in Concourse D) you have to pass through security.  If you’re flying American Eagle your flight will probably leave from Concourse C, meaning you have to leave the Club and clear security again.

Terminal C is easier, and much nicer.  It houses US Airways (for now) and Delta.  Terminal D houses Delta and Westjet.

I actually got exhausted typing out the above, sorry.  Here’s the Port Authority’s surprisingly useful LGA map.

Where is the Centurion Lounge?
The Centurion Lounge is located in Terminal B between concourses B and C near the big food court.  You’ll see some signage guiding your way.

You’ll need to take the elevator to the third floor and then turn left.  You’ll feel like you’re in an office building and then you’ll get Centurioned in the face.

Inside the Lounge

The entrance to the lounge features the lovely living wall common to all of the other Centurion Lounges (a touch that I’m pretty sure they copied from Qantas’s First Class Lounge in Sydney).

The LGA lounge is long and narrow, but I feel like they utilized the space very well.

There are power outlets at each of the green seats and TVs on the wall.  There weren’t many people in the lounge during my visit but I’m 100% certain this place gets pretty packed.

Past the hallway were the dining area and bar.

The dining area has a massive advantage over the DFW lounge: tarmac views!

The food at the buffet was excellent, menu from Executive Chef Cedric Vongerichten available here.

The crispy french toast was my favorite, an absolutely wonderful dish!

I walked back through the hallway to another seating area with great tarmac views.  The unified design of the lounges looked familiar yet distinct.

 

So how was it?
I loved it!  It’s a great lounge with great amenities, undeniably the best lounge in LaGuardia.  However, it’s outside of the secured area.  I typically fly on the consultant flights to LaGuardia (Sunday night-Friday afternoon), so my flights are usually pretty full, meaning so are the security lines.  I typically arrive to LGA as late as I can so I can spend more time with my clients, so although I love this lounge, I don’t think I’ll be able to visit it very often.  The time it takes to walk from the lounge over to Concourse D and wait in security lines that are sometimes legendary makes it pretty unpredictable for me in terms of making my flight.

So, to sum it up, this could be the best lounge that I never can visit.  Have you been?  What did you think?