#itinerantfoodie ✈️🍴

First lounge review for the year! Late last year, I was fortunate enough to get a chance to sample the soft opening for the Cathay Pacific Lounge at London Heathrow when I did a 2 month trip throughout Europe for Web Summit and other business purposes.

The lounge theme copies the similar theme (by London based Studio Ilse - I guess it’s their home town) to the Pier at Hong Kong Airport (except it doesn’t have the day rooms or day beds). However the shower suites are almost identical.

The lounge is probably going to be one of the few reasons why I would choose to fly through London rather than pick a European entry point.

Although London does have a Shake Shack restaurant, and a kickass arrival lounge which actually serves Champagne and has really nice shower suites ;) But lets stay on topic here.

An interesting thing to the lounge, is that upon entering - there is a first and business class section within the lounge. The first class furnishings is also similar to the Pier, plus has some extra offerings.

Other than the shower suites which match the Pier in HKG with very similar amenities, the lounge has certain sections too.

Noodle Bar section

Like the Bangkok lounge which has a unique Thai dish or the Taipei lounge with Beef Noodles, I was expecting to see some local UK dish there (fish and chips?!). However it just had the usual Dan Dan Noodles and Wonton Noodles.

The Dan Dan Noodles has a very similar taste and style to the San Francisco lounge, but it was nevertheless quite good. Out of San Francisco / Vancouver / London (the only non-asian lounges operated by Cathay Pacific I’ve been to), the Asia based lounges seems to be still the most consistent dan dan noodles though.

Lounge Area

The lounge area contains a relaxation type area similar to Taipei with individual couches and a communal table, with bar and a buffet with the usual Cathay Pacific buffet dishes as well as self service drinks/coffee.

For my flight, I was departing in the afternoon and being the winter months, I got to see one of the most amazing sunsets in the lounge.

The bar served the usual fare and also offered champagne which as a pre-flight ritual I ordered at least one (as well as the Cathay Delight). Also, the bar offered Pimms and Bloody Mary as a seasonal special (at the time of soft opening)

Solo Chairs and Bureau area

Last but not least, towards the back of the lounge there are solo chairs (basically the Solus chairs MK 2) - first seen in the Taipei Lounge. This is basically chairs which contain laptop and USB power. Great for a relaxed working environment.

And an area with iMacs which is hooked up to a printer which is handy for printing out documents.