KLM Crown Lounge Schiphol Amsterdam (Schengen) Food and Nutrition Review

I thought it was about time I stepped outside my Oneworld bubble and fly a Skyteam member. So here I am flying KLM Business Class across Europe, from London Heathrow to Gdansk, Poland, via Amsterdam in The Netherlands. This gives me the chance to check out the foods in the KLM Crown Lounge Schiphol Amsterdam in the schengen area of the airport.

And I liked what I saw! There were plenty of healthy options across a number of buffets serving salad, snacks, sandwiches and hot meals. Let’s take a look at what I saw.

What’s healthy?

• Oh wow take a look at these chickpea snacks – soooo good. Chickpeas are a source of soluble fibre (which is great for gut health) and slowly digestible carbohydrates (which help keep our blood sugar levels stable, which is good when flying).

• Cucumber and carrot sticks, and cherry tomatoes make snacking on vegetables easy. Add a little hummus and cheese makes them tastier and also even healthier (by adding protein and other additional nutrients). No matter what you choose to eat in the lounge, always have some vegetables such as these on your plate, or eat a plate of these vegetables first.

• Love this innovative fruit bowl – plenty of fruit here! If you are tempted by foods on the buffet but aren’t really hungry then you can just grab a piece of fruit from there without having to see the other food (and be tempted).

• There were different types of bread rolls available – really great to see many with lots of seeds and grains.

• Really great to see a range of salad vegetables available including olives and pickled vegetables (which will add some nice flavour). The cold pasta and potato salad are also good to mix a small amount through the salad vegetables as this will provide some resistant starch. Resistant starch is digested in the large bowel by our gut bacteria which helps to support a healthy gut (including keeping our gut bacteria happy). While the potato salad is covered in a creamy dressing, just keep to a small spoonful along with the colourlful vegetables.

Not so great. Caution.

• When I was checking out the hot buffet foods there was a women complaining to staff about the hot food choices. She was saying that none of the dishes go together and no thought had been put into choices – a very interesting comment and one I reflected on (I could start to see her point).
• The pesto sauce and pasta isn’t a very nutritious dish – there were no vegetables or protein included, just a sauce.
• The potato gratin is quite a creamy/cheesy dish that is high in energy so be careful about portion size.

• Now the premade sandwiches pose and interesting dilemma for me as to where to classify them – on one hand they are made from a dark rye-style bread which is great, however the ratio of bread to filling is quite large. The bread is really thick with only a few thin slices of chicken, some dressing and piece of lettuce. You are getting a large amount of carbohydrate but minimal protein and phytochemicals (from colourful vegetables). It you enjoy these sandwiches then you could either take the top piece of bread off and eat it like an open sandwich or get some of the salad from the salad and add to it.

Last word from travel food and nutrition review for KLM Crown Lounge Schiphol Amsterdam (Schengen).

It was great to check out one of KLM’s flagship lounges in their hub in Amsterdam (the other lounge is their non-schengen lounge) and it didn’t disappoint. There was a fair amount of variety in terms of the food offerings with many healthy options to choose from.

If you are also flying on KLM Euro Business then check out my review so you can see the foods served while flying intra-Europe.

For more information on my visits to airport lounges, don’t forget to follow me on Instagram and Tik Tok. And I always love hearing from you so if you want personalised advice or consultancy services please reach out.

NOTE: All pictures of KLM Crown Lounge Schiphol Amsterdam are my own and I review a lounge from just the foods and menu I see during my visit. There may be different options available at other times.