Chelsea Lounge — Local services in New York

AA/BA's new flagship Chelsea lounge inherited all the worst parts of the old American Airlines Flagship First Dining room (unbelievably bad service) and managed to screw up the good bits in the process (the food is now awful). It also lost all the charm and quality of the BA Terminal 7 Concorde Room.

The result is a cramped, dingy hole of a lounge, with a glitzy veneer that regular travelers will very quickly tire of. It's a genuine missed opportunity for American to up their lounge game at JFK, and I suspect most BA First passengers will long for a proper Concorde Room experience.

The old AA Flagship First Dining room at JFK was never great, and in particular didn't stand up to comparison to e.g. DFW. In particular, the service was always woeful - if the servers had to work in a real restaurant and survive on their tips, they would be on the street in a week. Its redeeming quality was that the food was good and drink selection generous.

And the old BA Concorde Room in T7 had all the aesthetic charm of your grandmothers front room, and felt long in the tooth, but it had good service and also good food and drink options. It also had lots of private space.

Unfortunately, the new Chelsea Lounge took all the worst parts of its predecessors, and managed to screw up the good parts.

Now the lounge is glitzy and stylish - something you could never say of either of the former lounges. But it's also small, has ZERO natural light, and no privacy to speak of. You can stand pretty much anywhere in the lounge and see every single other part of it (once your eyes have adjusted to the dingy lighting).

The centerpiece of the lounge is a vajazzled Champagne Bar, but the champagne options were awful - a sea of Moet, with only Ruinart trying to hold up any pretence of First Class. Where's the Krug, or the LP Grand Siecle?

The largest area is given over to a dining space, but again it's open plan and at busy times you are literally rubbing elbows with your neighbours. Unfortunately the service is still, unbelievably, inexplicably awful. More disappointingly though, the food now matches the quality of the service. Eggs Benedict with a stale untoasted muffin and something resembling processed lunch meat. Braised lamb that was so dry it must have been cooking for weeks.

I've visited now a couple of times, from quiet midweek mornings to busy friday evenings, each time hoping it was just teething pains and would be better. Alas no. Such a missed...

I flew 1st class with BA back in January, LHR - JFK & back. I visited the Chelsea Lounge on January 17th, and spent around 4 hours there in order to really check out everything it had to offer.

In summary: we were very disappointed, and in fact preferred the Soho Lounge just because it had a bit more character, some actual windows and better service.

The food offering wasn't great: a number of items were off the menu, but what was worse was that they served another guest a steak-frites under our noses and then claimed I was hallucinating - it was so obvious that they were doing something special for another guest but they wouldn't even admit to it.

I tried a burger and fries: it genuinely tasted worse than something from Burger King, and more like the patty has come from a cheap, frozen catering pack. The fries were pretty good, and the prawn cocktail was also tasty in their defence.

The showers were mostly out-of-order - which is interesting given the lounge had only recently opened.

They also had no idea about their premium champagnes on offer - passed something of a lower level off as a premium champagne, and just couldn't get the names of anything right. At least put people through some proper training if they are going to serve high-paying customers on the most expensive tickets money can buy!

In summary, it was a long way off the quality we expected, and I trust the next experience will be...

Headed home after three weeks of work in NYC. When I entered the Chelsea Lounge at JFK, I was struck by how calm and spacious it felt. I was greeted cheerfully and immediately by one of the team, Md Emran Khan. Who offered me a drink, which I happily accepted.

I found a cosy corner, to tap away at some work from. MD popped over and offered me a glass of champagne. As he placed the menu on the table, he smiled and said "we have much more". Which I felt was a nice touch.

LR Cristal in hand (delicious) and with a recommendation from MD. I opted for the jumbo crab cake and NY Sirloin. The crab cake arrived first, as one might expect. Very tasty. Would certainly order again (can understand why one of the other reviewers had done precisely that). I'd asked for the steak rare, and having had mixed experiences with steaks at other venues throughout the past week, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a properly rare and mouthwateringly rich looking cut. It was excellent and did not disappoint!

Overall, I felt very welcome, extremely comfortable and that I had ample space in the Chelsea Lounge. Would...