Review: British Airways Lounge Toronto Airport

The food in the BA J lounge is exactly what I want to have before a flight. Simple, easy to eat finger foods. If I don't want to eat on the plane, I can eat enough to keep me from getting hungry. If I want to eat on the plane, I can eat less to stave off my hunger. The trend toward more full meal style options in lounges has often come at the expense of finger foods. Even though I'd be entitled to use the F lounge at YYZ, I'd probably eat in the J lounge.

What's the shower set-up?

@Ryan, but you'd be missing out on the zucchini noodles!

@Ben, thanks for the review - very different set up from when I used their lounge at YYZ 4 years ago. The dining area for first looks to be much more substantial with the Plaza Premium affiliation. Just out of curiosity do you recall what types of champagne / spirits were on offer? I assume they would have something top shelf given the dedicated first class set up?

That business lounge looks incredible for the reason it is probably one of the only places in North America where you can get a Yorkshire Pudding. Easily one of Britain's greatest inventions.

They are those bread looking circular things surrounding the roast beef in the picture of the buffet hot options.

The F lounge menu has been the same since September. To still be serving gazpacho in December in the Northern hemisphere is a major fail in my book. The duck dish was good though.

Some of us Brits prefer to have our Yorkies as an actual pudding with a dollop of jam or spoonful of Lyle’s Golden Syrup warmed up with the oven turned off whilst you eat the main course.

That’s actually a pretty impressive outstation given BA runs only one daily flight from Toronto if I’m not wrong?

Makes a lot of sense for them to contract it out.

the butternut squash looked good..Never found the lounge there as i had the SSSS on my boarding pass and that took up my time!!

Indeed, I’d say any lounge that offers roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is a class above most so it’s hard to see how you ignore such an asset! Other than the BrewDog pub in the JFK lounge, this looks a cut above the food offerings I’ve found there and even in the T5 Galleries business lounge. (And what’s with BA catering and curry over in England?)

@Kerry - 2 flights a day

@Dot - that’s strange because the extra SSSS search takes place at the gate (though I didn’t know Canada did SSSS or if it did it had it for flights leaving for the U.K. it’s usually a USA thing in flights to the US)

I agree with DavidB ..... roast beef and yorkshire pudding .... served in the J section of an outstation lounge .... with only one daily flight. Amazing.

I'm a GGL CCR, but I'd still be camping in the J section.

p.s. the J section food offering looks pretty similar than that offered in the LHR T5 First (OWE) lounge. Which of course isn't stellar (for a OWE lounge), but shows how far the J section of this lounge punches above it's weight.

JFK, YYZ, IAH, ORD... BA’s lounge planning in North America really seems to have no rhyme or reason to it. It’s all over the board.

Sad when a business class lounge - not operated by the airline itself - makes one of the airline's first class lounges (ORD) look so disappointing, at best.

“Isn’t a terrible setup”?! That sounds a bit harsh to me, given the pics and the rest of the review. I know that you don’t like BA, Ben, but still...this looks really quite impressive for an outstation with two daily flights.

Have to agree with others, Roast berg with Yorkshire’s ticks a few of my boxes and wish other out stations offered the same.

@ Chris -- "Isn't a terrible setup" is intended as a compliment, I promise. 😉

And I think I have been positive towards BA overall lately...

BA needs to put on a decent spread if they want to compete with AC's Signature Suite, especially since AC has the advantage of a near-monopoly on Canadian corporate travel.

I'm also curious what the shower situation is now. The last time I used the international pier at T3 was back when 9W flew to AMS. There was a decent shower room in the Plaza Premium lounge at that point.

Huge downgrade on what used to be a BA operated lounge a few years ago with excellent freshly cooked food and a self service bar where I could make myself a pre-flight Negroni!

My visit to the BA lounge last night was underwhelming. A limited selection of tepid food. A narrow choice of cold drinks, unimaginative snacks in jars and zero atmosphere. A far cry from the former BA lounge where staff recognised you and welcomed you back. Truly disappointing.

The business class lounge is a very poor effort by BA. No better than the Plaza Premier lounge that it is part of. Very disappointing. Grand total of 5 tables with chairs. The rest is quite uncomfortable stools along a low communal table. The food was strictly high school cafeteria level. I would probably been better off to use my AMEX platinum to access the other Plaza Premium section. Not appropriate for an expensive business class seat. Very sad that this is their offering at my home airport.