July 29, 2025
On July 29, American Express Travel will roll out a revamp of its Centurion® Lounge Network dining experience, led by ‘The Culinary Collective,’ a dream team of Resy award-winning talent.
Chef Kwame Onwuachi is joining forces with fellow James Beard Award winners to bring next-level dining to American Express airport lounges.
Starting July 29, American Express Travel will roll out a major revamp of its Centurion® Lounge Network dining experience, led by “The Culinary Collective,” a dream team of Resy award-winning talent, the card company announced. Chefs Onwuachi, Mashama Bailey, Mike Solomonov, Sarah Grueneberg, and Overstor NYC bar director Harrison Ginsberg will craft elevated, globally inspired dishes and custom cocktails for all 15 U.S. Centurion Lounges.
“Since the first Centurion Lounge opened over a decade ago, we have been innovating to provide a unique and memorable experience,” Audrey Hendley, president of American Express Travel, tells BLACK ENTERPRISE. “We know how important our food and beverage offerings are, and The Culinary Collective by The Centurion Lounge helps us deliver that premium experience.”
As part of its upgraded Centurion® Lounge Network, Amex Travel is introducing Sidecar by The Centurion® Lounge, a sleek, intimate new lounge concept set to debut at Las Vegas’ Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) in 2026. The lounge will launch in Las Vegas just as Chef Kwame debuts his first West Coast restaurant, the steakhouse Maroon.
“I think Vegas is a blank canvas. Normally, I research like the history of the land and create food around that in a way that ties into my culture,” Chef Kwame explains. “But since Vegas, was just popped up in the middle of the desert, you can bring anything to Vegas. So I thought of bringing my culture to Vegas. Steakhouses, I think, are synonymous with Vegas, and they work.”
“I wanted to create a steakhouse that I would want to eat in. Well, a Caribbean steakhouse,” he adds. “I’ve never seen that before. And I just think those flavors will work really, really well in that concept. Not just giving them what they want, but giving them what they need.”
When it comes to how he plans to differentiate his Centurion® Lounge menu from the other award-winning chefs, “it’s really about cooking with flavors that reflect my culture and bridging the gap between the two brands and making sure that I’m maintaining excellence throughout,” he says.
The Bronx native and Top Chef alum’s gift for telling stories through food is one he looks forward to bringing to the airport lounge experience.
“I think it’s important because it’s indicative of the space that I’m in, you can tell a story, you can travel an ocean on a plate,” he said. “You can taste people’s cultures, and we can also do that with a plane. So I think I’m able to do that, telling those stories through the food by reflecting my culture with the cuisine.”
It’s a similar mindset Chef Mashama is taking to the Centurion® Lounge. A fellow NYC native who’s trained in French technique and currently cooking Southern cuisine at the renowned Grey Market in Savannah, Georgia, the two-time James Beard winner is planting more culinary roots at the Centurion® Lounge as she prepares to open her new restaurant L’Arrêt by The Grey in Paris.
“I like to think that my food is transient, encompassing my own personal migrations, and those of culinary traditions kept by generations of Black people on the move, creating spaces and moments of hospitality along the way and in the new places they called home,” Mashama says. “The Culinary Collective is an opportunity to create that kind of resonance between the creative possibilities of travel and a meal.”
Another chef who puts deep storytelling into her delicious menu items, Mashama is passionate about bringing the stories she tells through food at Grey Space to the menu items she has included in the Centurion® Lounge.
“At Grey Spaces, we like to think of Southern food as being on the move, linking culinary traditions to the migrations of Black folk from the American South to the many sites and cities in which they settled over generations,” she explains. “I always begin with ingredients to find the narratives, but what excites me is discovering unexpected connections and expressing them in new ways. This is how memory and history can inspire new encounters on the plate. I continue to be interested in the roles of mobility, transience, and innovation in these stories.”
Her return to Paris feels destined, as Mashama plans to tap into the city’s rich ties to the Black experience, blending its romance, food, and culture.
“Paris has a vast and varied relationship to Afro-Atlantic histories,” she says. Within these stories, the city has long been recognized as a welcoming space for a significant number of creative and free-thinking African-Americans. For me, connecting my New York, Paris, and Port City Southern stories is a natural fit for Grey Spaces, but also a chance to bring together these elements of my culinary expression.”
As the Centurion® Lounge expands to select airports nationwide, it creates space for travelers from all walks of life to connect over food through dishes that tell stories, spark conversation, and bring people together.
“When the meal stays with you, shifts something in your awareness, or even asks something of you, that’s a satisfying moment for me,” Mashama says. “Culinary traditions can be a bridge, but the bridge is really between people, often strangers, who find a way to welcome one another because of food.”
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