Capital One’s giant LaGuardia Airport restaurant shows how credit card issuers are redefining travel perks

Airport lounges used to be a perk. In 2026, they are a battleground.

American Express is refreshing Centurion Lounges and adding faster Sidecar formats. Chase is experimenting with champagne parlors and hyperlocal chef partnerships in its Sapphire Lounges. Citi is back in the ultra-premium card game. And Capital One, the relative newcomer, is making a different bet.

Instead of building another lounge at LaGuardia Airport, it built a restaurant.

The new Capital One Landing at Terminal B is a 12,500-square-foot, chef-driven dining space created with José Andrés. It has a 2,250-square-foot working kitchen, the largest in the terminal, and a menu built around Spanish tapas cooked from scratch. It looks more like a stand-alone dining destination than a cardholder waiting room.

That is the point.

From lounges to ‘landings’

Capital One’s airport strategy started with lounges at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport, Denver International Airport, and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

Those spaces became known for local partnerships, individually plated food made on site, and drinks from neighborhood breweries and distilleries.

The idea was that even if you never left the airport, you would still get a sense of the city.

The Landing concept is an evolution of that thinking. Instead of adapting lounge food to feel more local, Capital One asked what would happen if the airport space felt like a real restaurant first and a lounge second.

“When we went to the lounge space, we similarly felt that lounges were becoming totally cookie-cutter . . . They were all kind of buffets. The drinks were the same, lounge to lounge,” Matt Knise, SVP of premium products and travel at Capital One, tells Fast Company.

The Landing is Capital One’s answer to that sameness.

“We felt that there was room for a restaurant type experience, so you could still sit somewhere a little bit more comfortable and put your stuff down and get a really quality restaurant, quality bite of food and still make it to your gate on time,” he says.

Why a chef matters in a card war

To make that work, Capital One sought out someone who could actually run a restaurant inside an airport.

“We needed a partner on the other side of the equation, the hospitality and food side of the equation, who had the same passion about solving what we saw, and we found that with José and team,” Knise says.

For Andrés, the project feels personal.

“For me, in a way, it’s kind of a dream,” he says. “Capital One helped me build my own kitchen away from home.”

That kitchen is not decorative. It is central to the pitch.

“What makes this different—this Landing and this place—is that we’re making the food from scratch,” he says. “It’s not sitting there three, four hours in a place waiting for you to arrive.”

In fact, Capital One built Andrés a kitchen with top-of-the-line equipment akin to what you would find in a high-end restaurant outside the terminal.

Tapas for travelers on a clock

The menu leans into Spanish tapas for a reason.

“I believe in smaller portions and I believe in in the rainbow of possibilities,” says Andrés. “I don’t know a lot of concepts that are quicker than tapas.”

Guests can grab plates from the tapas bar, order via QR code, or take items to go. Dishes like croquetas, the bikini sandwich, cheeses, and flauta bread are designed to be eaten quickly or slowly.

Knise says the design balances both.

“We felt deeply that a great dining experience and a relatively quick dining experience, those two things did not have to be mutually exclusive,” he says. “It’s a bit of a choose your own adventure.”

Capital One is also leaning into what it calls Daily Rituals. At LGA, that includes tableside martinis, vermouth carts with garnishes and pintxos, oysters during select windows, and dessert carts.

The airport as the new loyalty showroom

In the fight for affluent travelers, the airport has become the most visible showroom for what a premium card actually promises.

For Capital One. the space itself is part of the strategy. Skylights, a terrace filled with greenery, floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Manhattan skyline, and a 30 foot mural by Queens artist Amrita Marino all reinforce that this is meant to feel like a place, not a waiting area.

The thinking is straightforward. If the first memorable part of your trip happens before you even board the plane, and it happens inside a space tied directly to your credit card, the card stops feeling like a payment tool and starts feeling like part of the journey.

For years, perks lived on paper. Points multipliers, statement credits, travel portals, concierge access. Useful, but abstract. You only felt the value when you booked a flight or scanned a benefits page. Lounges changed that. They turned benefits into something physical you could walk into, sit inside, and experience before your trip even began.

Now that every major card issuer is investing in lounges, the competition has moved past who has a lounge and into what that lounge feels like.

Is it a place to grab a snack, or is it somewhere you plan to arrive early for? Does it feel interchangeable with every other airport space, or does it feel like a destination tied to the city you are in?

Knise puts it this way: “We want a manifestation of what we stand for as a brand . . . we want them to leave and go, Oh, wow. Capital One is a company that totally has my back and is innovating to make my life easier.”

For Andrés, the payoff shows up in a different way. Not in brand metrics or cardholder retention, but in what travelers say as they walk out.

“I’ve had people say ‘I cannot wait to travel again so I can come back to eat the croqueta. [That] something like this happens in an airport. It’s very special.”