Capital One Touchdown opens quickly at DCA — and it is not like any airport lounge we have ever skilled

However not like the opposite lounge areas, the Touchdown’s two areas are separate. To get from one to the opposite, you have to to exit into the terminal and stroll round a nook.

The variations do not cease there. Not like different lounges, the Capital One Touchdown will assign all visitors to a desk after check-in, like at a sit-down restaurant — which means guests haven’t got free rein to hang around wherever they like. The entry coverage can be extra restrictive than on the Capital One Lounges in different airports.

On the grab-and-go, issues additionally take an surprising flip: On the Fly can be open to all DCA vacationers, and the foods and drinks there won’t be free for anybody — no matter what playing cards are in your pockets.

Here is what to anticipate at each halves of this new Capital One vacation spot.

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Capital One Touchdown most important lounge

Capital One Touchdown sits in DCA’s Terminal 2, with an entrance from the Nationwide Corridor most important thoroughfare close to Concourse D.

Its location locations it closest to American Airways’ gates, although DCA’s small measurement means it is solely a brief stroll from the gates commonly utilized by different airways that use Terminal 2.

This differs barely from entry guidelines for different airports’ Capital One Lounges, which enable these cardholders to enter with two visitors with out incurring a charge.

Further visitors, in addition to these with a Capital One Spark Miles for Enterprise or Capital One Enterprise Rewards Credit score Card, pay $45 per individual, per go to. Everybody else pays $90 — besides children beneath 2 touring with cardholders, who can enter at no further value.

Upon arrival, you possibly can acquire entry by exhibiting your related Capital One bank card (when you’ve got one) and a boarding move for a same-day departing or connecting flight as much as three hours earlier than departure.

Capability

At 5,500 sq. ft, the Capital One Touchdown at DCA has a present most capability of 90-plus visitors, making it smaller than the Capital One Lounge at close by Dulles Worldwide Airport, which measures 8,500 sq. ft and has a capability of 120-plus. (Although the Touchdown’s capability would possibly change as soon as the house is open.) That signifies that solely a restricted variety of visitors can benefit from the services at one time in an age of fixed lounge overcrowding.

The Capital One workforce has anticipated this subject. To handle occupancy issues, the workforce will handle demand by permitting cardholders to make reservations as much as six months upfront — an unheard-of growth in airport lounge tradition.

Stroll-ins can be accepted if house is offered, and, as with the opposite Capital One Lounges, vacationers can add themselves to a waitlist and monitor wait occasions by way of the Capital One app.

Structure and what to anticipate

Upon checking in on the host stand, you and your get together can be assigned seats at one of many tables. That is not like most different lounges, the place you could wander by means of the lounge, bar and desk seating to discover a spot giant sufficient in your get together.

All of the seating within the Capital One Touchdown outposts is at tables, with discreet desk and chair setups flanking a central part with two lengthy banquettes and a bar space with counter seating and a bar-height desk.

The seating areas have been cleverly designed with the traveler in thoughts. Coat/purse hooks and energy shops can be found at each desk, and there are areas between and beneath tables for baggage storage.

Further baggage storage areas for bigger luggage will be discovered at every finish of a row of tables. And for individuals who want to keep linked whereas on the go, there’s complimentary high-speed web entry.

Whereas a few of Capital One Touchdown’s tables are adjoining to home windows looking on the jetway, the seats alongside the terminal-facing facet of the room are alongside half partitions. Because of this, the house can be open to the terminal visitors moderately than utterly walled off in quiet and privateness, an intentional determination made by Capital One to supply guests with alternatives to observe passersby.

The considering behind the Touchdown, as defined to us by Jenn Scheurich, Capital One’s head of journey and retail expertise, is that the DCA traveler is often flying domestically, not on a protracted layover. Due to this, they spend minimal time within the airport between clearing safety and heading to their gate.

To greatest cater to the sort of traveler, Capital One designed the Touchdown’s food-and-beverage service to be delivered shortly. Any merchandise on the menu, even craft cocktails and scorching tapas, is designed to reach in beneath 20 minutes.

By serving meals and drinks quicker, vacationers could discover they spend much less time within the lounge, maybe making the smaller variety of seats much less of a priority as a result of fixed turnover.

For the reason that Touchdown was designed for shorter layovers, you will not discover showers, leisure areas or personal convention rooms right here. Nevertheless, it does have two gender-neutral bogs with altering tables and enjoyable native art work.

The decor is a part of the attract of the lounge, with geometric murals on the partitions, a surprising basket-inspired lighting set up within the coronary heart of the lounge and quirky knickknacks on cabinets across the bar. Lengthy partitions of home windows carry a number of gentle into the house.

Capital One Touchdown meals

If in case you have the time and the proper bank card, José Andrés’ tapas menu is certainly a purpose to cease by the Capital One Touchdown.

The partnership between Andrés and Capital One marks the restaurateur’s first expertise with airport eating. The José Andrés Group was not hands-off; the chef and his workforce have been integral to the planning of the lounge, from the menu to the decor, furnishings and kitchen structure.

For instance, the workforce made sure that choose elements on the Touchdown’s menu (Spanish bread, olive oil, jamon) have been sourced from the group’s favourite purveyors and even all the best way from Spain.

The venue has a breakfast menu, in addition to a lunch and dinner menu. You may choose up chilly snacks and desserts on the buffet, however the remainder of your meals can be plated and served by an attendant.

Do not miss the gazpacho in cute branded glasses when you pick charcuterie and cheeses, kale or Caesar salad, hummus and veggies, and baba ghanoush with pita chips.

Order your scorching gadgets by way of the QR code on the desk, and your meals can be delivered in simply minutes. (Throughout our go to, every thing got here in beneath 10 minutes.) We have been followers of the croquetas, the bikini de queso grilled cheese sandwich, the carne asada with mojo verde sauce and the not-so-Spanish-but-still-delicious eggplant and tofu donburi.

For dessert, the burnt Basque cheesecake and oat milk gentle serve are musts.

Breakfast choices embrace olive oil pancakes, eggs Benedict and a Spanish omelet (pincho de tortilla).

If you would like a very particular deal with throughout your time on the Capital One Touchdown, preserve an eye fixed out for waiters with roving carts. These interactive tableside experiences are impressed by the José Andrés Group’s restaurant The Bazaar.

Throughout our preview, a waiter got here round with labneh cones — tiny ice cream cones crammed with labneh (a gentle Center Jap cheese) after which topped with caviar. A cheesecake cart would possibly make an look within the afternoon. No upcharge required.

Capital One Touchdown drinks

A workforce of top-notch mixologists and wine administrators from the José Andrés Group designed the Capital One Touchdown’s beverage menu. They put quite a lot of thought into making a cocktail menu that gives the kind of high-end craft cocktails you’d discover in D.C.’s city bar scene in a manner that is speedy to assemble for flyers on the go.

The workforce achieved this by means of culinary magic that lets them premix many of the elements. Most of the signature cocktails are on faucet — take a second to admire the faucet handles designed to appear like foosball figures, a José Andrés restaurant staple that provides a playful contact to the house — together with two draft beers (a Spanish lager and a rotating native beer).

A number of drinks on the menu draw inspiration from Spain, the place Andrés was born. Signature drinks embrace a nitro-machine espresso martini with a touch of mint and banana, a sangria roja, the Negroni Cortado (made with gin, candy vermouth, Campari and palo cortado sherry) and the Rum & Coconut (a a lot lighter model of a pina colada that is clarified utilizing coconut and options Banks 7 golden mix rum, lime, orange and membership soda).

If consuming and flying is simply too dehydrating, strive one of many nonalcoholic concoctions; the Fresa y Pina (a refreshing drink with strawberry and pineapple flavors) was delightfully tasty.

Espresso drinks (together with chilly brew straight from a faucet), caffeinated and natural teas, Spanish wine and soda are additionally obtainable.

Should you love personalised cocktails, preserve your eye out for these enjoyable roving carts. Throughout our preview, one of many bartenders served customized gin and tonics along with your alternative of elements and garnishes. Throughout breakfast hours, you possibly can choose from an array of fruit juices to pair with glowing wine from a mimosa cart.

On the Fly quick-service venue

The opposite half of the Capital One Touchdown is known as On the Fly, positioned simply across the nook off Concourse D. It is an a la carte quick-service cafe serving premade sandwiches and snacks, bottled drinks and caffeinated drinks made to order.

On the Fly is open to all vacationers, and it isn’t free for any Capital One cardholders.

Right here, you may discover a fairly typical airport grab-and-go meals purveyor and low store, a substitute for Starbucks and different airport meals distributors. The explanation to cease right here as a substitute of 5 Guys or &Pizza can be that the menu gadgets come from the José Andrés Group.

The one comfort for cardholders is that should you pay with a Enterprise X or Enterprise X Enterprise card, you possibly can obtain a 50% low cost for all meals and drinks.

At On the Fly, refrigerated cabinets maintain premade sandwiches (tuna, grilled vegetable) and salads (hen Caesar, child kale), plus lidded plastic tubs of yogurt, hummus and pita, and fruit.

You can even choose up Terra chips or José Andrés-branded potato chips, bins of crackers, a contemporary bagel or brisket sandwich, an empanada or a croissant from the counter. Numerous espresso and tea drinks (together with the aforementioned chilly brew from a faucet) are additionally obtainable to buy; the menu remains to be being finalized.

The costs listed on the cabinets have been sky-high (e.g., $9 for a small serving of hummus and pita chips), as befits an airport, so we’re curious to see if noncardholders will select the Capital One choice over Starbucks, Dunkin’ or different Concourse D eateries.

A consultant from Capital One tells us they’re nonetheless finalizing pricing, so we’re to see if the costs change sooner or later.