Amex Centurion Lounge Melbourne Food and Nutrition Review

If you are travelling out of Melbourne, Australia and don’t have lounge access through an airline, a lounge option is the Amex Centurion Lounge Melbourne (also known as The Centurion Lounge). I have access through my platinum American Express Charge Card and I find it really useful when travelling. So last time I was travelling out of Melbourne International Airport I stopped in to explore the Amex Centurion Lounge Melbourne food. It was a fairly small lounge with both cold and hot buffets when I visited early evening at 5.30pm. Was the food fancy? No. Were there lots of choices? No. But it made for a comfortable stop before my flight. There weren’t many people in the lounge at all which made it ok, but being a small lounge I feel it could become packed quite quickly.

What’s Healthy?

• There was a decent variety of salad ingredients on the cold buffet. And the best thing is the ingredients were all separate so you can make up a salad the way you like it. There were colourful salad vegetables such as tomatoes, capsicums (peppers), corn, red onion, cucumbers and carrots, as well as chickpeas, pesto pasta salad, and freekah and edamame. It is great to have chickpeas and edamame on offer as they are a good source of protein and soluble fibre. Cold pasta has it’s own type of fibre, resistant starch, which is also good for the gut. It was nice to see legumes and grains providing higher fibre options to mix up with the colourful salads (and also add some great flavour). Balance up your plate – try having 1/3 of your plate chickpeas, pasta or freekah, and 2/3 colourful vegetables. .

• There were yogurt pots, sago pots and juice available on the buffet in the early evening. I did think it made the buffet was look like it was set for breakfast. Sago desserts such as puddings are common and so the passionfruit and mango sago, along with the mixed berry yogurt pots were likely to be the dessert/sweet options for the evening. Small yogurt and berry pots are a nutritious offering for dessert if you are feeling like something sweetish. I didn’t get a chance to try the yogurt to see if it was plain or sweet yogurt so just remember that sweet yogurts may have added sugar and so stick with small pot.

• There was a cheese board available with mixed nuts and olives – all nutritious snacks. While mixed nuts are a healthy snack they can cause severe reactions in people who have a nut allergy. Make sure you keep nuts in the lounge and don’t take them on the plane. And before boarding the plane wash your hands with soap so you don’t transfer any residual nut material onto seats or tray tables onboard.

• Always a great sight when there is a fresh fruit bowl in a lounge. During this visit it was a bowl full of green apples – not my favourite apple but loved by others (I love Pink Lady apples) and still nutritious and a great option for a snack.

Not so great. Caution.

• Stir-fried noodles, Alfredo pasta, and Chicken chilli verde chicken and coconut rice were available. These dishes were fairly tasty but not very balanced. The cheese pasta was literally cheese and pasta, while the fried noodles were basically just fried noodles with a garish of shaved vegetables. The Chicken chilli verde in quite an oily watery sauce with a couple of pieces of carrots and rice to serve. Overall these dishes were mainly carbohydrates and not very balanced. If you feel like a hot dish it is also good to think about a visit to the salad bar too to pack a more nutritious punch before stepping on your flight.

• Gochujang chicken wings were also available on the buffet. Gochujang is a red chilli paste used in Korean cooking. Chicken wings are quite fatty, without much meat so be mindful of how many you have – try having two with a side salad.

• Small vegetarian pizza slices were available on the buffet in the Amex Centurion Lounge Melbourne and were being kept warm by a heat lamp. When I saw the pizza slices under the heat lamp I did think they looked quite dry and unappetising, however I tasted a slice from the middle of the pizza and it didn’t taste too bad. The outside slices didn’t have much topping or sauce.

• There were a range of condiments available including Nutella, peanut butter, butter, vegemite, strawberry jam, marmalade, and honey, presumably for the white rolls under the heat lamp. These very much seemed like breakfast condiments left out all day. Would have been better to have some more nutritious fillings for the bread rolls such as vegetables, spreads such as hummus, beetroot, avocado, lean protein fillings etc.

Last word on Amex Centurion Lounge Melbourne

If you don’t have any airline lounge access the Amex Centurion Lounge Melbourne is a comfortable option. It is not as big as other Centurion lounges overseas, and the food options are more limited than other Centurion Lounges too. The foods were simple with not much innovation of creative culinary flair. You can make a balanced meal in this lounge but only because of the salad bar – the hot dishes aren’t balanced.

NOTE: All pictures of the Amex Centurion Lounge Melbourne food are my own and I review a lounge from the foods and menu I see during my visit. There may be different options available at other times.

For other Amex Centurion Lounge food information see reviews on Centurion Lounge Dallas, Centurion Lounge London Heathrow T3, Centurion Lounge Hong Kong, and Centurion Lounge by Pontus Stockholm.