LGA’s Capital One Landing Lounge, best and worst airlines for long hauls, take-home pillows on Qatar Airways business class, and trip-worthy food favorites (Saturday Selection)

Throughout the week, our team shares articles they’ve stumbled upon that may interest our readers, even if they might not otherwise merit a full post. Here are some of the posts we found interesting this week: LGA’s Capital One Landing Lounge, best and worst airlines for long hauls, take-home pillows on Qatar Airways business class, and trip-worthy food favorites.

First Look Inside Capital One’s Landing Lounge at New York’s LGA Terminal B

MilesTalk’s Dave Grossman is giving us a first look at Capital One’s new Landing Lounge at LGA Terminal B: a concept he describes as a “high-quality tapas restaurant” with a menu produced in collaboration with celebrity Chef José Andrés. Think Chilaquiles, carne asada, Flauta manchego, and even a charcuterie counter where you can customize your own charcuterie. (Sounds amazing!) And the 12,500 square foot space looks striking as well. Primary cardholders of the Venture X and Venture X Business cards gain unlimited complimentary access to these Capital One Landing lounges, with a $45 fee per visit for the guests they bring. According to Dave, the space seems intentionally designed to promote casual dining rather than hours-long loafing, which may help slightly mitigate overcrowding. Based on his review, the food looks like the major attraction here.

The Best and Worst Airlines for Long-Haul Flights, per Travel + Leisure

Travel + Leisure loves their “best” and “worst” lists. This time, they’ve analyzed 26 airlines and organized them into a list of 19 (instead of 26, for whatever reason), ranked by best and worst for long-haul flying specifically. They paid special attention to things like timeliness, reliability against cancellation, value, seat comfort according to passenger reviews, in-flight entertainment, and dining. I don’t think anyone will be terribly surprised that United and American Airlines took up the last spots on the list, with United at 18 and American Airlines at 19. Delta fared much better, ranking 9th, and the winner of the bunch was Singapore Airlines at number 1.

Did You Know Qatar Airways Lets You Take Business Class Pillow As A Gift?

People in this community love to collect amenity kits. And the airlines more or less intend for those to be collected and taken home. The same goes for things like pajamas. But the bedding usually stays put. There is an exception, however: Qatar Airways business class bedding comes with a primary pillow (which can’t be taken home) and a little supplementary pillow with various cringey quotes on them. “Love, Work, Travel, Repeat” for example. Or simply “Today is a good day.” Now I’m curious – what’s the best cringey quote any of you have seen on a Qatar Airways decorative take-home pillow?

How Texas Became an Unlikely Epicenter for Czech Pastries

I love when my travel destination has a “must try” food or dish that’s either only truly accessible in that place (like Mexico’s Chiles en Nogada, which is very difficult to find outside of Mexico), or just not the same elsewhere (like Balinese Gado Gado, which is made in a specific way to create a sort of compressed rice dumpling base, but is sometimes served with just standard white rice outside of Bali.) When I lived in Austin, I got to experience having one of those special “can’t find it easily elsewhere” foods right at home. The Kolache is technically a Czech pastry, but Texas’ version is, of course, a thing of its own. Ours were more like buns than pastries, and were often stuffed with the kinds of fillings you’d expect to find in a breakfast taco (of course), like brisket, jalapeno and cheddar, or sometimes funky fillings like sourkrout. For any of you interested, my absolute favorite Kolache spot in Austin was Batch Craft Beer and Kolaches. (In fact, I believe that’s the last meal I ever ate in Austin.) If I could go get one of their jalapeno and cheddar kolaches right this minute, I would.

Do you have any food favorites that just aren’t the same if you try to find them back home? Those dishes you’d literally plan a repeat trip just to have them again? Again, Chiles en Nogada is basically that dish for me. I’m sure internationally diverse megacities like DC or New York may have this dish if I looked hard enough, but it feels almost as easy to hop down to Mexico City at that rate. What are your trip-worthy food favorites?

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