Chicken + Beer — Restaurant in Los Angeles

The TL;DR: DO NOT EAT HERE! Get yourself a few bags of snacks and a drink at one of the other places in this terminal instead. Or just wait until you get on the plane for their beverage & snack service. You (and your wallet) will be much happier. I wish I were kidding.

I expect certain things from a sit-down restaurant in an airport terminal: kinda high prices, at least average-tasting food, & service that is quick, if not especially-attentive.

What I got from C+B yesterday: sky-high prices for questionably cooked and apparently unseasoned food, and an automatic 18% gratuity for sub-par service.

This was the only sit-down restaurant that was open in Terminal 3. After a longer-than-necessary wait just to be seated, the 4 of us ordered drinks and lunch. The Sprite syrup in the soda machine had run out, so the server gave us a bottle from their cooler. They didn't have either of my first two beer choices, so I hastily chose a different, middle-of-the-road craft beer (12oz. bottle), which I would have skipped if I had read the price more carefully: $15. Sodas were $8 each. The cranberry juice was a bargain at just $5. Movie theater pricing on drinks is more reasonable.

The fried chicken was very bland, and slightly undercooked, but I think at least not dangerously so...unlike what the customer at the table next to us was served. They had to talk to the manager to get that item deducted from their tab. If you want your chicken cooked & seasoned better, stop by Popeye's or KFC on your way to the airport.

The Caesar salad barely had any dressing, and our server never brought out the extra dressing we requested. The Mac & Cheese was somehow devoid of all flavor. No we don't all have COVID; the pizza we got after arriving home tasted great...especially by comparison to this dud of a meal. I also very much question whether the cheese on my loaded tots was the Tillamook cheddar they advertised, but there wasn't really enough of it to know for sure.

In any case, we declined when our server asked if we wanted more to drink, as our flight would be boarding soon. It took about 10 minutes to get the check. At least we did not miss our flight because of the slow service. When I got the bill, my eyes nearly popped out of my head: $170 for lunch for 4 people; $36 for drinks (only one of which was booze), $98 for food that was mediocre at best, $24 for the non-optional 18% gratuity, and ~$13 tax. The bill makes it looks like the tax is applied to the gratuity, but doing the math just now, I don't think this was the case.

As we were leaving, I really wanted to warn the people who were waiting in line to be seated about the overpriced, bland food and lack of service that they would be forced to pay for. But I'm generally not the kind of person to make a scene. Heck, I'm usually not even the type to leave a bad review if one or two things are amiss. But if writing this keeps just one person from wasting their money here it will have...

I don’t like to complain and having worked in the food industry, I am understanding about most things, but this experience left a bad taste in my mouth because of the blatant dishonesty of the staff. my partner and I got bumped from a flight and got two meal vouchers for $15 each. First the restaurant staff said they couldn’t accept them- because there was no credit card number on them and then when we insisted-they checked with a manager who said they could take them.

When our bill came, they put my partners meal on one tab and deducted the entire voucher amount from his and part of my voucher amount from the bill- less than the full $15. They put my meal on a separate receipt with our drinks and charged immediate gratuity, which meant we didn’t get to use the full amount of the vouchers.

When we asked why we weren’t getting the full $30 deducted there were a bunch of excuses that didn’t make sense. Then the manager was called over and it was clear that they understood they had done something shady.

Finally they offered to do new bills with each of our meals on one tab then each of our drinks on one for 4 tabs, but noted they would need to charge my partners card again and he may not be refunded the first part for several days.

Why they didn’t put both food items on one tab, deduct the $30 in vouchers and then let us pay the remainder is beyond me, but what is clear is they are dealing in some dishonest business practices and hoping no one will call them on their insane rationalizing.

Will not...

We had a layover here and decided to try this out since it was near our gate and it sounded like it was going to be good. Did not realize it was the restaurant owned by Ludacris until after we ate our meal. This was beyond disappointing. We both ordered a Fried Chicken Honey Butter Biscuit, $19 each. The menu says it is served with peach jam and grits or rosemary tots, we both chose the tots. The chicken was small mostly battered chewy bits I had to cut off, not hot or fresh, the biscuit was dry, honey butter was more butter and only on the outside of the biscuit, there was no peach jam but a container of Smucker’s strawberry jam was provided, and those tots had zero rosemary and they were stuck together in a giant tot-wad. Chicken +Beer was extremely disappointing. Maybe it was because it was the location in the airport…? We could give them the benefit of the doubt.🤷🏻‍♀️ The service was not great either. We sat ourselves as per the signage, and waited for almost 5 minutes before someone asked us if we wanted a drink and brought us a menu. There were several servers walking around and hanging out by the kitchen chatting, so it was not lack of personnel. When we were ready to leave it took us waving down our server to inform him we wanted the check. We probably should have sat at the bar since that is where the staff was hanging out and those customers were given more attention than those sitting at tables. I cannot recommend based on...