First Look: DFW’s New Chase Sapphire Lounge Is The Airport’s Best Bank Lounge—With Whiskey Tastings, Facials And Elevated Food

The new Chase Sapphire Lounge by The Club at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport opens on July 16. I got a preview of the space this morning. Honestly, it’s very nice, and I’d say it’s the best bank lounge in Dallas right now.

It’s one of the larger Chase lounges, only slightly smaller than LaGuardia and Philadelphia. Some will miss the arcade and video games they have elsewhere, but there’s a real food focus, there’s a spa with facial treatments and you’ll find whiskey tastings as well. It’s interesting, definitely worth a visit.

Size, Location And Hours

The lounge is 18,000 square feet and located in terminal D across from Gate D25. It is open 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. You’ll enter the lounge, show your credentials and then head upstairs.

This makes the space nearly as large as Philadelphia and New York LaGuardia, which helps tremendously with accommodating guests without waits. It’s in the same terminal as both the American Express and Capital One lounges as well. While not everyone has access to more than one, having each bank’s lounges in the terminal will also help spread out passengers and reduce crowding as well.

DFW terminal D is one of the best in the country for lounges, along with New York JFK terminal 4 and New York LaGuardia which also host Chase, American Express and Capital One. The terminal also has an American Airlines business class Flagship lounge and Flagship First Dining room, as well as The Club, Plaza Premium and Plaza Premium First lounge, Minute Suites, Admirals Club and Priority Pass-accessible Be Relax Spa.

Lounge Features

The lounge has a beautiful bar with a stone countertop for charging phones. There’s a family room and nursing room. There are bookable rest pods, facials and showers in the spa area. And there’s a whiskey lounge.

Maybe it’s just my taste, but the buffet is a step up in food choices compared to the other Chase lounges I’ve been in recently. That’s both menu selection and taste of the dishes – though I’ll hold back final judgment until tasting how everything comes out when they’re delivering food for a full lounge at scale.

The lounge itself is a very long rectangle. There are multiple zones, with the spa to your right when you come in upstairs. There’s seating to your left, the bar, and the dining room. Behind the main bar is the whiskey bar.

In typical Sapphire Lounge fashion there’s a living room with decorative fireplace, and the bar is a real showpiece, and central to the lounge.

One of the things that really struck me about this lounge is that it felt very light. There’s no tarmac views. There’s no direct outside window line. Instead, there’s a view out over terminal D check-in – but somehow outside light flows through that area nicely.

The family room was nice, but small. And is it odd to say that the bathrooms were beautiful, especially the flooring (although my own taste is far more modern).

Food and Beverage

The lounge features both standard Sapphire fare, as well as food offered with local restaurant Encina including blue corn butterscotch pancakes and slab bacon with cheddar grits. Coffee is from Fort Worth’s Cherry Coffee. It’s worth noting that, just as I’ve found elsewhere, the staple Sapphire Noodles weren’t on offer.

Here are the lounge’s current menus:

The grits and bacon in the morning are a winner. The bacon was really high quality, thick and with a wonderful smoke to it. It sort of reminded me of the bacon that the Capital One lounge in the airport used to use on its mac and cheese when it first opened. Sadly the mac and cheese is still there, but the bacon is long gone.

Naturally you can have a Sapphire Burger, and like I found just three days earlier in another lounge there was the standard burger and one with a slight local twist.

I haven’t loved the buffets at some of the other Sapphire lounges, and I’ve almost always focused exclusively on made to order items. But everything that I tried here was really quite good.

Here’s a broader look at the buffet items.

Meanwhile, the bar is fully stocked but they feature a number of lounge-specific interesting cocktails that will be worth trying.

Whiskey Lounge

There’s a dedicated whiskey lounge in a room behind the bar. Inside is a staffed whiskey cart offering guided pairings, a lounge special whiskey cocktail, and various Texas whiskeys. They have their own lounge-exclusive custom barrel selection.

Relaxation

The spa area is where you’ll find booked facials, relaxation rooms and showers.

Here’s the menu:

You can reserve time slots by scanning a QR code anywhere in the lounge.

There are two rooms for facials, I did not schedule one for myself while I was there. There’s been plenty of availability for this in the Philadelphia lounge when I’ve visited. I thought that it looked something like a dentist’s office?

There are also relaxation pods, which in a way strike me like a Minute Suites. They’re small private rooms. Just no couch or desk in these, but a nice place to escape from people for a little while.

They offer Peloton stretches and meditations accessible on personal devices. This is something they plan to roll out across other lounges in their network, as part of their broader Peloton partnership. While I understand why Peloton wants to market to Chase’s premium customers, I’m not sure I see the consumer-facing value in this, but I’d love for readers to share their perspectives on it.

Chase’s First Grab ‘n Go

This isn’t going to be available all the time. It’s not something they’re rolling out to other lounges (yet). They’re testing the grab ‘n go concept here in Dallas, which I’m sure they’d frame as seeing how guests react to it but I interpret that to me seeing how manageable it is, especially for budget.

Grab ‘n go is something passengers love. It’s also expensive. Capital One has seemed to cut back on it compared to their offerings in their first Dallas lounge five years ago. American’s Provisions in Charlotte implemented a one item per passenger rule. (United’s Club Fly is still very generous.)

Access

Access is standard Sapphire-lounge policy:

• Chase Sapphire Reserve personal and business cardmembers: cardmembers enter free, with up to two guests. Extra guests are $27 per person; kids 2 and under are free. (Employee cards on a small business Reserve account do not receive lounge access.)

• J.P. Morgan Reserve and Ritz-Carlton cardmembers receive access on the same terms as Sapphire Reserve. This is bascially a Sapphire Reserve card in a different design with free United Club access. It’s targeted at J.P. Morgan Private Bank clients (usually eight figures on deposit with Chase). It amazes me that they do not receive priority access, the way Amex offers Centurion cardmembers.

In addition, any Priority Pass cardmember (including from non-Chase cards) can visit one Chase Sapphire Lounge per calendar year free per Priority Pass account. Cardmembers get priority for entry, so Priority Pass could mean waiting longer – but there were no waits for anyone in the Philadephia lounge when I was there on Sunday, and this is an 18,000 square foot lounge that adds to a huge number of lounge seats already in the terminal. It will be interesting to see what waits develop here.

The Chase Sapphire Lounge Network

Current Chase Sapphire lounges now include Boston, Dallas – Fort Worth, Las Vegas, New York JFK, New York LaGuardia, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, and Washington Dulles.

They’ll be opening Los Angeles soon, doubling the size of Phoenix, and adding one in Miami. That will bring them to a network of 11 lounges.

The Best Play In The Dallas Airport

If you’re an American Airlines AAdvantage Platinum Pro or Executive Platinum and you have several hours to kill at DFW airport, redeem miles for Flagship First Dining. That’s by far the nicest thing in the airport, and in my view the nicest in any U.S. airport. As an Executive Platinum I can visit, and bring two guest, for 20,000 miles.

After the Chase lounge preview, I actually headed to the Capital One lounge. While I generally prefer Capital One’s food over competitor bank lounges, DFW was their first lounge. It’s really showing wear. The food isn’t as good as it once was, or as good as in other airports. And grab ‘n go has really been cut back.

My seat in the Capital One lounge DFW

If you have access to the Plaza Premium First lounge for the second best dining in the terminal (accessible within two hours of departure), great, though I’m not sure I’d pay an extra $45 for it. So under normal circumstances I’d definitely choose Chase for DFW layovers – the space is large, it’s bright, and well-designed. The food program is elevated and whiskey tasting and spa options are fun.