Yankee Pier, a Priority Pass restaurant at San Francisco International Airport (SFO), offers a respectable menu of food and drink and is one of my favorite places to eat before a flight.
Priority Pass added Yankee Pier to its restaurant lineup in 2018. It is located in Terminal 3 (United) and open daily from 5:00AM. to 9:00PM.
I passed Yankee Pier for 15 years as I walked to the United Club or American Express Centurion Lounge and never had a reason to stop. But with $28/person in restaurant credit via Priority Pass, it now is a regular stop before a flight from SFO.
You’ll find Yankee Pier in Concourse F, near Gate F4 (formerly gate 72). The restaurant is usually crowded, but I have never had to wait for a table.
Here’s the current menu, with breakfast available all day:
For breakfast, I order plain yogurt, a cappuccino, and the meat lover’s breakfast scramble (served with potatoes and toast).
All the food arrived at once, within 10 minutes of ordering.
I’d rate the food as good, but actually not better than the nearby American Express Centurion Lounge. However, with overcrowding a major problem at the SFO AMEX Lounge, I generally steer clear of it, even though I prefer the breakfast spread there:
My breakfast bill came out to $24. I could have walked away without opening my wallet (other than to scan my Priority Pass card). But I believe it is appropriate to tip at Priority Pass restaurants and asked my server to charge my card $0.01 and add a $5 tip. He looked shocked that I would leave a tip, which is not a good testament to my fellow Priority Pass users.
If I am in a rush, I will just leave a cash tip.
Don’t get too comfortable, as the restaurant does not have any power ports at the tables and booths (no doubt deliberately).
I’ve eaten in this restaurant over a dozen times over the last four years. Although I am sure it is farmed, I always loved ordering a salad with salmon.
That went away with the pandemic, but fish tacos are still on the menu and delicious.
And you can still order salmon with ratatouille from the menu or a nice salad with chicken breast.
CONCLUSION
The Yankee Pier at SFO is my preferred Priority Pass restaurant due to its menu and location. I’ll offer review of Giant’s Clubhouse and Mustard’s Bar & Grill in the days head, but Yankee Pier is my favorite.
Have you tried Yankee Pier at SFO? How was your experience?
Thanks. Always great to see a real world report on these new restaurant options. I would have loved to see what that crab Benedict looked like. Scrambled eggs and plain yogurt, you’re right, you can get anywhere.
Can’t wait for an evening review since I’m never at SFO in the morning if I’m connecting.
Thanks for reading Donald!
I was in recently and ordered the crab scramble….was indeed fresh and tasty and especially a nice, lighter option with the added spinach. Ordered a side of bacon too for good measure though! Great to have not 1 but 2 PP options in the United terminal at my home airport.
@ Matthew — Why charge your card $0.01? Was this for some sort of record-keeping?
They said it was necessary in order to leave a tip. Had they just charged my card $5, it would not have been a tip and gone to the house, not the waiter.
@ Matthee — Good to know! It always disappoints me when people think the tip on something complimentary
is zero. I feel for the workers, who barely get by as it is. Thanks.
Does this place have any relationship to the Yankee Candle corporation?
Not to my knowledge, though I also note the similarity in logos.
2 out of 3 times I walk by Yankee Pier, I smell bad fish — you know that ammonia smell that comes from really bad seafood that will make you sick. I could never bring myself to eat there, even for free.
FYI you can do takeout orders with PP at this restaurant, ordered a breakfast sandwich with sausage instead of ham, came with breakfast potatoes, liked it better than usual AMEX fare but the french toast at AMEX recently has been excellent, almost as good as the crispy french toast it launched with.
I was excited to read about these new priority pass reaututants and, tried to stop by to grab breakfast for my family for our recent 6 am flight. But despite both having 5 am posted openings, we found niether to actually be open. Yankee Pier had a lot of staff prepping food and what not, and when I asked I was just told that they’d be opening in 30 to 45 minutes. When I asked about the 5 am posted opening time I just got a confused look. By the time we got to the giants clubhouse they were starting to open, now we’ll past 5 am, but we no longer had time to order anything. I was pretty bummed out.
I’m sorry to hear that. Thanks for sharing!
Just curious, but what else besides the yogurt wasn’t on the menu?
Ask and you shall receive. (Not sure)
As much work as it takes to put together a hotel review, theses Priority Pass restaurants reviews have a much broader appeal. I really appreciate seeing this.
I usually travel alone and when I go to Yankee Pier I’ll offer to pay for someone else waiting to get seated if they pick up the tip. Meet some pretty interesting folks that way, everyone’s got a something they can talk about if they’re in an airport.
This review is outdated (receipt is from 2018) and wrong. The food there is now disgusting. Probably because they cannot get skilled labor. Firstly they were limiting the dining capacity cause of not enough waitstaff. They now have enough waitstaff but the kitchen staff don’t know how to cook, The calamari was too salty. Asked them about it and they remade it-still not edible.
Maybe if you actually read the review instead of just looking at the pictures you’d notice that I said I was including meals from visits over the last four years.
I have eaten there as recently as last month and I find the food just fine.
So thank you for your opinion, but I disagree.
I have done Priority Pass at all 3, and i will say that the takeout at Yankee Pier treats is awful from a Customer Service perspective. Sat down at Mustard’s and the experience was night and day better than Yankee. Food/Drink was better at Mustard’s , but Mustard’s is at a different price point. Giants clubhouse in an awful location,
I will publish a review of Mustard’s shortly. I was actually quite disappointed by it.
Food at Giant’s is pretty good. I still prefer Yankee Pier.
Mustard’s is the worst. Two for two on bad experiences. The second time I had to leave for my flight without eating, after an hour at my table. Tables around me came in, ate, and left, some of them ordering the same burger that never arrived for me. Heard many excuses and “it’s just coming now” throughout, and at the end it turned out that my order had never been submitted.
None of these are great restaurants, but with the Amex lounge crowding, they at least provide some options.
And yes, tip the poor wait staff people. I’m anti-tipping in principle, but until we learn how to pay properly, tip. it’s not hard.
Wow that doe not look very healthy.
Are you still on a diet Matthew?
I always eat at Yankee Pier when passing through San Francisco—-and passed through Thursday and read about this being in the Priority Pass—Thursday night. Food is always good—love the chowders. Great to know it’s part of the program. Makes me realize I have to read the list of priority pass restaurants before passing through various airports.
Yankee Pier has been there for at lrast 40 years. I remember eating there in the early 80s when coming through SFO. I suspect it’s the oldest restaurant at the airport and perhaps one of the longest continually operating airport restaurants in the nation.