LaGuardia’s New José Andrés Capital One Landing Opens Next Week—And It’s America’s Best Airport Restaurant

New York LaGuardia Airport’s stunning new Capital One Landing by acclaimed chef José Andrés opens next week—and it’s not just another airport lounge. With exceptional tapas, tableside cocktail service, and panoramic views, it’s poised to become America’s best airport dining experience. Here’s an exclusive first look inside.

Most airport lounge food disappoints, and most of the time you’re better off eating inside the terminal. The arguable exceptions to this are Delta One lounges, United Polaris lounges, American Airlines Flagship First Class Dining, Air France first class lounge dining, and Capital One’s Landing at National airport in D.C. Only one of those is accessible with the right credit card.

Opening on February 18, 2026 is Capital One’s second Landing location at New York LaGuardia airport. I had a chance to preview it on Monday. The space is twice as large as the location in D.C. The menu is about one-third different. It’s gorgeous and light and the food is spectacular. There’s a good chance that this will be the best place to eat inside any U.S. airport.

Capital One Landing New York LaGuardia Details

This Capital One Landing is 12,500 square feet, which is more than twice as large as the first one in D.C. Like the first one there, this is a collaboration with Chef José Andrés and José Andrés Group, which keeps staff on site.

Think of it more as a 180-seat restaurant than a lounge, but one that’s designed to accommodate carry-on luggage (with nooks to store bags at seats, also hooks for purses beneath tables) and laptop work (power outlets everywhere).

This isn’t repurposed space, either. They took indoor space that was adjacent to an open rooftop and enclosed it to create an indoor terrace. There are floor to ceiling glass windows and even natural light coming in from the ceiling, as well as greenery that brings the outside feel inside.

There are fantastic views of airport operations, located as runways intersect, and a view of the New York City skyline as well.

Like in D.C., you can make a reservation like it’s a restaurant if you wish (through the Capital One app) or just show up. The app will tell you how busy the space is, and if it’s full you can add yourself to the waitlist digitally. I had to do that in D.C. for the first time a couple of weeks ago. I added myself when I was at the TSA checkpoint, and was welcomed in 10 minutes later when I arrived at the Landing there.

Extend the restaurant concept even further, when you arrive and check in with your boarding pass and credit card (or lounge pass in the mobile app) they will take you to your seat. And food is all served. There’s no self-service buffet. You walk up to the tapas bar and ask for what you’d like (it’s all on display) and at your table there are QR codes for ordering off food and drinks off the menu.

This new flagship Capital One Landing has two main spaces, the dining room you see when you enter and a large terrace area. Both have tapas bars. I highly recommend sitting out in the terrace space.

Make no mistake, you’re here to eat. They dedicated over 2,200 square feet to a real professional grade kitchen. There are 25- and 30-foot ceilings.

They’ve expanded the use of ‘Rituals Carts’ which began at National airport and has since spread to all of their lounges. These roaming carts come through at different times, and include the labneh cone with caviar offering from D.C. but includes goat cheese-infused tomato cones as well. There’s a vermouth cart with customized garnishes, tableside martini service at sundown, and gin and tonic and mimosa carts. You can’t request these – they will circulate at various times throughout the day and approach you asking if you’d like to partake.

There’s no grab ‘n go food here. They do have water and coffee to go. There are five private restrooms.

Capital One Landing New York LaGuardia hours are 5 a.m. to 10 p.m., starting on its first day of opening.

And by the by, each Capital One airport space has its own flavor of chocolates. The ones offered to you when you leave the New York LaGuardia Capital One Landing are ‘Valencia orange and sea salt’.

Experiencing The Food

When I visited the Capital One Landing at Washington National prior to opening, my first question was ‘this food is fantastic, but what will it be like in real world production?’ Surely they were putting their best foot forward pre-opening. And my second questoin was ‘what will it be like after a year?’ Most celebrity chef restaurants open well, but decline quickly. The name chef isn’t spending their time on site!

But I go back to Capital One Landing in D.C. over and over. I have an office in D.C. and I’m there regularly. And it’s still excellent.

To be sure, Capital One was putting its best foot forward pre-opening just in terms of having their top people still doing training, supervising and putting out the food. I enjoy the shrimp in D.C., but here it was cooked absolutely perfectly. It came out as I’d expect it from a Michelin-starred meal that was $200+ a head. I do not expect that to happen at scale and with regular staff going forward. But it doesn’t have to – it just needs to do what they already do in D.C., day in and day out.

All of the food here is very good. Your favorite dish will depend on your preferences, but everything is on the menu for a reason and it’s not just to cater to lowest common denominator preferences either. Still, people love the steak and the croquetas!

I was able to try the goat cheese tomato cone, prepared tableside from a ritual cart.

Honestly, to me the anchovies and ham are dessert. (So are the breakfast pastries, by the way.) So I usually skip sweets at the end of the meal. But you do have dessert options!

Accessing Capital One Landing New York LaGuardia

Capital One Venture X and Venture X Business cardmembers have unlimited access to the lounge with a same-day boarding pass departing within 3 hours of entry.

Guests are no longer free unless you spend at least $75,000 per calendar year on the card. At Capital One’s lounges that provides access for two guests. At Landings it is one complimentary guest. (Paid guests are $45 apiece, $25 if under age 18, and free for under 2.)

Since authorized user cards are free on Venture and Venture X, they now charge $125 to add lounge access to each of those cards. Meeting the $75,000 spend threshold on a Venture X/Venture X Business account provides guest access to any authorized users with lounge access as a paid add-on.

Capital One Venture and Spark Miles cardmembers can pay-in for $45, and non-cardmembers can pay $90 for access.

Capital One Landing New York LaGuardia Menus

Here are the menus for the Capital One Landing New York LaGuardia. Menus do rotate, but I have a hard time imagining that we’ll see the croquetas, carne asada, or shrimp dishes leaving the menu any time in the foreseeable future.

I highly recommend all three, as well as a visit to the tapas bar. The white Spanish anchovies are incredible. The anchovies in extra virgin olive oil are very good, too. And the Spanish jamon is genuinely high quality.

At breakfast the crema catalana pastry will change your life, based on my times trying it in D.C. And the chiliquiles are worth ordering.

Comparing To The Nearby Amex Centurion And Chase Lounges

Just like at New York JFK, Capital One’s entry is the newest and right by both an American Express and a Chase lounge. (There are also American, United, and Air Canada lounges in the terminal.)

While I was at LaGuardia I visited both the American Express and Chase lounges. What a contrast! Here’s a previous review of the Chase Sapphire Lounge at LaGuardia which is a gorgeous space, but it’s underground with no outside light.

I enjoyed the lounge very much, but the food was ok at best. The salmon was delivered with a rock hard bun and the burger was bland at best (meat wasn’t nearly as good as the excellent burger from a couple of years earlier).

On this visit the kitchen was under maintenance and food ordering wasn’t available, so options were limited to the buffet. It leans heavily into sandwiches which are more bread than anything else, and salads that are mostly lettuce.

Ultimately, you can eat the food in the Chase Sapphire lounge here. You won’t go hungry! But there’s nothing you’ll actually crave or walk away from thinking about later.

The Chase lounge is far superior to the American Express Centurion lounge here, whose entrance is directly next door. Aesthetically the design is just sad by comparison.

You can eat anywhere in the lounge, but there’s a dining room alongside the buffet. It had food that will fill you up, but I didn’t touch any of it while I was there. There just wasn’t anything that looked appealing.

The Capital One Landing is on the pedestrian bridge heading towards American Airlines. The American Express and Chase lounges are at the entrance to the passenger bridge heading to the United and Air Canada gates. These bridges are just a couple of minutes apart from each other, so you can easily hit them all if eligible. I suspect that Amex and Chase cardmembers at LaGuardia are going to be a bit jealous, though.

I could see eating at Capital One Landing and potentially moving over to Sapphire if you really wanted a facial, personally I’d just stay at the Landing.

Where Else Could We See New Lounges?

Capital One has lounges at New York JFK, Washington Dulles, Denver, Dallas – Fort Worth and Las Vegas. They now have these Landings at Washington National and New York LaGuardia. And they’ve announced their biggest lounge yet for Charlotte.

Getting space in airports is tough and competitive, but I’d look out for:

• Miami opened a lounge solicitation last year for a 13,793 square foot space near gate E7 for a common use or membership (non-airline) lounge. That’s larger than you’d expect for a The Club, Plaza Premium or Escape lounge although that doesn’t rule one of those out. American Express is already in Miami, so my best guess was it could go to Chase or Capital One.

• The Phoenix Airport Terminal 3 North 6 gate expansion will have space for a 10,000 square foot lounge. There will be a connector bridge to existing termianl 3 and plans for a future tunnel to terminal 4. The expansion is expected to be completed next year, at which point a new lounge project might commence. It should be near United, Air Canada, Alaska, JetBlue, Frontier, Spirit, Sun Country, Allegiant, and Porter gates. American Express and Chase are already in the airport (though Chase could be interested in trying to swap for this larger space).

• San Francisco will get a 24,000 square foot lounge as part of the Courtyard4Connector project being built between Terminal 3 West and the International Terminal. Proposals were listed as due next month. The space is near the Centurion lounge and not far from Polaris. It would be far larger than the biggest Capital One lounge, and could be interesting for Chase (which today has lounges that are almost this large).

• Austin airport has just completed its West infill project which includes space for a 20,000 square foot lounge specifically discussed as being intended for a financial institution. The West Infill area opens February 23, so we hopefully could see a tender for the lounge space soon (unless plans have changed). A year ago the airport hoped to see the lounge open in 2027, but that assumed completing an RFP process last year that I do not think has started yet.

In general I enjoy Capital One lounge over Chase lounges, and those are better than American Express lounges. But there are more American Express lounges than Chase lounges, and more Chase lounges than Capital One. It’s great to have competition. American Express added digital waitlisting after Capital One did so, and now plans dining-focused ‘Sidecar’ locations in airports where they already have lounges, copying the idea of what Capital One has done with its Landings.

American Express forced airline lounges to get better 14 years ago. And now Capital One and Chase are forcing American Express to get better, too.

For now, though, I want to see more of these Capital One Landings, I hope that American Express Sidecars are good, and there’s nowhere in an airport I want to eat more than the Capital One Landing at New York LaGuardia – other than, perhaps, at the cheese counter of the Capital One Lounge New York JFK.

Visiting Capital One Lounge Washington Dulles On The Way Home

On the way home I stopped through Washington Dulles and visited the Capital One lounge there. It was packed but not on a wait list. I was shown to a table right away.

When a lounge is this busy it isn’t peaceful, and I wouldn’t come here for the food as such, but there’s a grab ‘n go section still which is great and there are private restrooms. There was a line for the grab ‘n go, but no line for the restrooms.

There were two minor annoyances with this lounge, which is a beautiful space and a great use of the base of the airport’s historic control tower.

• The soda machine needs maintenance. There wasn’t much syrup mixing into the cola or the vanilla soda. There wasn’t proper carbonation in the cola, either.
  
• The power outlet at my seat had a hard time holding a plug and needs maintenance.

I mentioned both of these things on-site as I left, and staff promised to address them, but I had the sense they were pacifying me more than anything else.