The Pearl Lounge at Bratislava Airport reopened a couple of weeks ago and it’s free with my Priority Pass card, so I went for a breakfast visit. I’ve never flown out of this airport before, so this is all new to me. The airport itself felt calm, spacious and organised, with numerous power points, which probably gives other people fewer reasons to pay to enter here.
There’s a rather impressive view from the lounge over the landside area and a First World War military aircraft, the Caproni Ca-33.
It wasn’t very busy in the lounge when I arrived with just one table occupied, although it got a little busier later on. The lounge is spacious with a variety of different seating, plenty of power points and easy to access wi-fi. And some shrubbery on the tables, but I suppose they have to make the space look premium.
The food and drinks counter.
The cold food selection, although there was a hot food offering of sausage, baked beans and scrambled egg as well which didn’t tempt me. This really was sub-optimal from a cross-contamination point of view, as there was just one set of tongs to take the food out, which meant that the whole lot was cross-contaminated. If you were a strict vegetarian, you couldn’t go near this as it was used for the ham. The options here are lettuce, cucumber, ham, cheese, feta and olives, which is the sort of breakfast that I like.
The coffee machine and drinks fridge. The espresso coffees were decent with a richness of flavour.
The beer options, along with Heineken, but it was too early in the day for me to partake.
My little breakfast selection. The pastries were OK, nothing too decadent, but I liked the salad elements although the ham was a bit insipid. Incidentally, every airport lounge should have olives and that feta cheese was very agreeable as well.
The on-line reviews for this lounge, bearing in mind it has only been open for a couple of weeks, are very poor. For my purposes, this lounge was fine as it had coffee, juices and some breakfast food items, but it seems that the food options are not surprising and delighting people. I didn’t have beer as it was too early in the day, but the selection was acceptable as there was a choice of three, although the other alcohol options seemed limited.
The lounge was generally clean, but they perhaps need to sort out the cleanliness of the plates and bowls, which were a little sub-optimal. Surfaces were also sticky in places on things such as the jugs of juice. Bearing in mind I didn’t pay for this particular visit I was entirely pleased, but I can see where all of these negative reviews are coming from as the entrance is usually over £30 and is going up soon, which is quite a lot of money. As I’ve written about before, the problem is that the only way customers really get value from lounges like this at these prices is to drink lots of alcohol, not something which is really ideal for multiple reasons.