James A.
Yelp
Located in terminal D of the Intercontinental Airport of Houston (IAH), this Centurion Lounge is a good place to grab a drink or two and a couple of bites before boarding your plane.
The Delta AMEX Reserve card allows access to the cardholder for both Delta Sky Clubs and AMEX Centurion Lounges, when taking a same day Delta flight. IAH doesn't have a Sky Club (since Delta has only a small presence here, only flying to Delta Hub Cities), so this was our only choice for a lounge (since we were flying domestic).
It's hard to find, since it is located one level below the main gates in terminal D. To get down there, one needs to actually enter the Duty-free shop near Gate D12 and look for a sign. There is an elevator going down, and you walk a long hallway to get to the entrance (it is the only lounge that I could see situated in the area). You wait in a queue to let the greeter look over your AMEX card, ID, and boarding pass. They will waitlist you if the lounge gets dangerously overcrowded, but they let us through this time.
It was still very crowded inside during the mid afternoon, and felt lucky to find some empty seats with a small table. As one can imagine, one has to be careful in navigating around the overcrowdedness and carry-on bags lying around. The selection of food was small with one station, but well crafted, and because of the busyness, the food was pretty fresh. I ended up getting two servings of the basil chicken thighs and with a large portion of white rice, was a satisfying late lunch.
Centurion is top notch for beverage selection, both alcoholic and non. They have top shelf labels available complementary (unlike Sky Club where you have to pay), and this location had 3 draft beers on tap (with only 1 being an IPA). I tried the malty brown ale along with a crisp lager...both super cold and so refreshing on a hot day. There is a suggested unique cocktail list that you can order from. The bartender will only serve one drink per person at a time to take back to your table. However, there are a few table servers moving around the lounge, and will gladly refill your glass if you can get their attention. They have a good selection of non-alcoholic self serve stations, with soda, seltzer being available.
There was a dedicated, reserved space for elite Centurion AMEX member (maybe Black Card members?), but it didn't seem that impressive, especially since you could see inside of it and there was no noise proofing. The bathrooms are older and small. And because you are in the lower floor below the gates, there is no view or natural light at all.
Lounges have really upped their game in the past 5 years, as this would have been considered very good before. But now, this is at the lower end on the list of the various Centurion lounges we've visited, but still absolutely worth a visit if you have some time before your flight at IAH, and want to pass it by with a drink or two.