The Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse lounge at LAX is located in Terminal 2 and it’s one of my favorite airport lounges I’ve stopped at to date. It’s a small but beautiful lounge with great cocktails, decent entrees, and a passionate and attentive staff. Here’s my Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse at LAX review.
Finding the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse at LAX Terminal 2
We easily found the lounge a little after we went through TSA Pre-Check at Terminal 2. Look for the illuminated staircase and then walk your way up the stairs and you’ll see a sign pointing you directly to the Clubhouse — you can’t miss it.
This area of the terminal was recently renovated and it’s a pretty stunning sight.
After we strolled up to the entrance, the receptionist met us with a warm greeting and within seconds, we entered the lounge.
There had been a number of cancellations out of LHR due to snow and our Virgin Atlantic flight 24 had been delayed for over an hour. Due to the delay, we had a total of about four hours to spend at the lounge, which actually passed pretty quickly thanks in large part to the never-ending cocktail selection.
I should note that while this is a Priority Pass lounge, admission is limited to certain hours. Also Priority Pass guests do not get the full selection of hot menu items or cocktails so the Priority Pass experience will differ a lot from the experience below.
The Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse LAX Lounge
Upon entering, I noticed how chic all of the furniture and lounge decor was. There was nothing “boring” about this lounge and I could quickly tell that I’d be enjoying my time at the Clubhouse.
The first part of the Clubhouse lounge has comfy seating in the form of long couches with plenty of multi-colored pillows that emphasize the modern look. There are some small tables as well, which all come with menus for your convenience.
In addition to the couches, there are several swanky chairs you can choose for your seating options if you’re not into sharing a couch with others.
The walls are lined with seating options that look out to the taxiways. It’s mostly Delta and Southwest jets that you’ll be viewing but you also get views as far as the LA skyline and the Hollywood Hills.
As you move more inside the lounge, the seating transitions into more dining-friendly tables and chairs.
At the very end of the lounge, there’s a semi-private booth area with a soothing LCD display. I wanted to snag that area but there was a gentleman there before we arrived and he never moved an inch so we had to admire it from afar.
Eventually we chose one of the tables seen below for our dining experience. There were no outlets near our table, though you can see that one of the other tables did have outlets near it.
The bar is also located in the middle of the lounge.
Beside the bar is an area with chips, cookies, and water. (The cookies are soft, chewy, and amazing.)
The bathroom is also nearby, just around the corner.
Overall, it’s not the largest lounge but there are a lot of seating options. Considering that they limit access for Priority Pass members when Virgin Atlantic flights are set, I don’t think overcrowding will be a major issue. I will say that about 1.5 hours before departure, the lounge filled up and there were very few empty seats in the lounge so I strongly recommend arriving early to lockdown a preferred seat.
The dining experience at the Clubhouse
We decided to go ahead and grab a table in the portion of the lounge dedicated to dining. Within seconds we were greeted by Andy, a passionate server who most frequenters to this lounge have probably have met in the past. He was excellent in every respect and his passion for serving was infectious and greatly appreciated.
We chatted it up with him for a while and decided to let him serve up some different cocktails to get our lounge experience started.
He started by bringing us the Mediterranean, which is a fresh cocktail that comes with Grey Goose, Lillet Blanc, Singani 63, Aperol, strawberry, lemon juice, and seltzer. It’s a great starter drink. They also brought out some chips and spiced nuts to snack on.
The next drink was the Bramble, which was another great starter drink that came with Bombay Sapphire Gin, blackberries, lemon juice, and blackberry liqueur. I really enjoyed this cocktail as did Brad.
At this point, we started to work up an appetite and ordered one of the starters, the salmon poke bowl. The poke bowl was absolutely delicious and both me and Brad agreed it was one of the best dishes we’d been served in any of the lounges we’d visited over the past couple of weeks.
Our server then surprised us with another drink called the Reckoning, which was a strong rum and punch that came in a formidable Tiki-inspired mug. It took me back to our trips to the Caribbean and was delicious, although by this point I was barely finishing half of my drinks before moving on to the next round.
We then decided to order main entrees. I went with the Clubhouse burger and Brad tried out the tagliatelle. These dishes were not quite on par with the poke bowl but were still decent.
During our entrees, our server brought out another beverage which he touted as one of the top signature cocktails of the lounge. This was the Beach Bonfire. It came with Bourbon, aged Cachaca, pineapple, gum syrup, Angostura and Bitterman’s Chocolate Mole Bitters, fresh hickory smoke, along with a shorty of pilsner. I absolutely loved this drink!
To cap things off, our serve brought us out a serving of the donuts which were very good as well.
After finishing up dessert, our server decided to bring us our yet another cocktail. At this point, I wasn’t even coming close to finishing up all of the drinks but decided to just roll with it and try out as many different drinks as possible.
This drink was the Virgin Redhead which came with some bubbly and Sapphire Gin.
After all of these drinks and entrees, we’d passed over three hours in the lounge and it was nearly time to board. Thankfully, our flight had not been cancelled though it’d been delayed over a 1.5 hours. Still, we happily made our way down to our gate (which was only a couple of minutes away) and boarded the aircraft bound for snowy London.
The menus
Below is the full menu for the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse at LAX as of March 2018.
Final Word
Overall, this lounge experience was a departure from the norm. I don’t think I could handle every lounge experience being like this (with the never ending cocktails) but this was a fun instance to enjoy some indulgence. Having a passionate and personable server made the experience that much more memorable and I’d have to rate this lounge experience as one of the best I’ve had in recent memory.
Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned travel expert covering destinations along with TSA, airline, and hotel policies. Since 2014, his content has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, and CNBC. Read my bio.
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