Airports aren’t usually known as bastions of fine dining, but there are plenty of exceptions. Amid all the fast food, snacks brought from home, and convenience-store sandwiches, you’ll find a number of excellent eateries at airports all across the country. These sit-down restaurants require more of your time than simply grabbing a snack from Hudson News, of course, but they can be worth your time if you have a couple of hours to spare at the airport. Wondering which restaurants to seek out on your next layover? Here are the 10 best airport restaurants in the country, according to a new survey.

Best of the Best

Eating in airports is an inherently strange experience — between jet lag and time-zone changes, they’re perhaps the only place where you won’t feel weird about eating “dinner” when your body thinks it’s 4 a.m. In some places, though, it can also be strangely comforting. 

To find the best of the best, we turned to USA Today’s ongoing 10 Best series, which recently published a list of the crème de la crème of airport restaurants in the U.S. Nominated by a panel of experts and voted on by readers, the entrants are as far-flung in cuisine as they are geographically.

Topping the list is Landry’s, a Gulf Coast seafood restaurant with locations across the country — including an airport location at George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) in Houston, Texas, a major hub for United Airlines. 

The menu includes traditional fare like calamari, fish and chips, and lobster bisque, as well as more interesting offerings such as fried alligator, blackened redfish etouffée, and snow crab. There’s also gumbo, pasta (with and without seafood), and in-house toppings. The Melissa topping comes with sautéed shrimp, scallops, crab, and mushrooms, while the Pontchartrain includes crab, mushrooms, and white wine cream sauce. While you don’t have to be a seafood lover to enjoy Landry’s — especially since they also have cocktails, wine, and beer — it certainly helps.

Landry’s first opened in Lafayette, Louisiana, in 1947 and has been in business ever since. It has more than a dozen locations, most of them in Texas and Louisiana, as well as a few in Missouri, South Carolina, and Florida.

Top 10 Airport Restaurants in the U.S.

From a Creole-Vietnamese crossover in New Orleans to honey chili chicken wings in Northern California, the rest of the top 10 restaurants on this list represent a culinary cross-section that may have you considering a layover next time you fly just to eat a meal. Here’s the full top 10:

• Landry’s Seafood (George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Texas)
• Woody’s at the Airport (Monterey Regional Airport, California)
• Commanders Burgundy & Gold Club (Washington Dulles International Airport, D.C; this location has since permanently closed)
• Cask & Larder (Orlando International Airport, Florida)
• Cigar City Brewing (Tampa International Airport, Florida)
• Cadillac Mexican Kitchen & Tequila Bar (George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Texas)
• Osteria (Will Rogers International Airport, Oklahoma)
• MoPho (Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, Louisiana)
• Chickie’s & Pete’s (Philadelphia International Airport, Pennsylvania)
• Cat Cora’s Kitchen (Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Georgia)

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