Custom Burgers by Pat La Frieda

What a mess. Even to order a takeaway you must fight your way though an iPad app and not talk to a person. I yelled to an employee before I swiped credit card and was told they are backed up and a burger would take a long time. How long? More than 20 min. THIS IS AN AIRPORT, I NEED IT FAST! DUH… I wish they would fire OTG and give me back an overpriced McDonalds. OTG means you can’t eat.

I ordered the burger and onion rings. It’s a good thing that my flight was delayed 4 hours or I may have missed my plane, the service was so slow. The place was not busy, so that’s no excuse. The burger and rings were both cold. Not room temperature, but cold. Pat La Frieda should be embarrassed to have their name on this place. McDonald’s would have been better.

Ordered Pancakes and bacon which took a while to come. But they were hot, the bacon crisp and warm. The OJ tasted sour. Cleaned my plate and drank half the juice.

First off there’s zero service here. Order from the iPad and wait. And wait. And wait. When your drink arrives it’s tiny and watered down. Food arrives and the photos of the food on the iPad LIE. Big surprise, right? What I got was a tiny mushroom Swiss burger ($ 12) and cold fries. Fast food tastes better. I know it’s the airport, but c’mon. No one around to ask for anything you might need. 18% gratuity is automatically added. For what though? There’s no service, just a person who mumbles «excuse me», drops your plate off and scurries away. Save your money and just get a get a wrapped sandwich somewhere else in the terminal.

Super cute place, and awesome ordering system on iPads. The food was so boring! No flavor at all, burger was so tiny, my plate with a burger and fries literally looked like a kids meal. Not very happy with that cause it was $ 15 for an entrée and bottle of water. If I’m ever back in this airport, I’d try to eat before you even get to the airport, because there are no familiar restaurants in the whole airport, and trying a new place when your starving can be a cause for disaster.

Had a super early flight (boarded at 5:30 AM) so we got into the terminal at 4:30 AM. Having it been so early, I hadn’t eaten anything. I sat around the food court and read the breakfast menus and decided on this place. I was probably the first or second person to sit down (and I assume wait for the place to open, which I was rudely informed by an employee didn’t open until 5AM).
After two other people sitting near us put their orders in, I followed suit and put one in at 4:55AM. At 5:28, every single person around me (including people that had ordered 20 minutes after me) had already gotten their food. I informed the manager or waiter or whoever was standing around (doing nothing) that my small plane was boarding and I really needed to get my food and run. He told me that they accidently gave my food to someone else and they were making it now. I tried leaving a couple times and insisted they comp my meal, but they kept telling me that it was only going to be a couple minutes. FINALLY at 5:45 I got the food RAN to my plane as they were closing the aircraft doors.

The system set up to order and pay is one of the worst and most confusing I’ve ever seen. You order using an iPad with a font so small you need glasses to read it. The pictures used to advertise the products DO NOT match up to the product recurved, pickles are not spears, they’re slices. The burgers were obviously precooked and held at temperature because they were done all the way through but barely warm, which was hard to believe since the ticket time was close to 25 minutes. If I hadn’t gone back I wouldn’t of received my beverage. The only thing they got right was the tater tots. I would never go here again!

It’s the burger place in LGA’s Cibo Express monopoly of dining establishments in C Terminal. There’s a place to eat in and also a takeout counter in the area next to the Food Mart.
Highlights: You can buy a $ 5 burger (+tax) at the airport if you choose your toppings carefully. As with many burger joints, you get lettuce, tomatoes, uncooked onions, and condiments for free. There’s also technological innovation here — you order through iPad, you’re texted when your order is ready, and you check out with your receipt at self-​service checkout stations on the side of the food mart.
Critiques: The menus at the sit down restaurant and the takeout counter are inconsistent. On the sit down menu, burgers come with fries. At the takeout counter, they don’t. As an aside, some drinks in the adjacent Food Mart don’t have a price tag. So you find out how much it costs when you go up and pay. The burger is very reminiscent of a fast food single patty burger. Not very flavorful — what you would get at the drive thru. For the base price I paid, it’s acceptable. If I bought one of the specialty burgers ($ 10+), I’d be disappointed if the quality was the same. While I was intrigued by the electronic ordering system, other guests were frustrated with it.
Overall: The ordering and payment system is fancy but the food is nothing special. Also, the self checkout stations don’t take cash.

Food was solid but whoever set up the systems there completely failed. There is no flow anywhere in the area, you pick up food that takes forever to cook in different areas, you pay in different areas, and MAN does it take forever.
I feel for the people working there because they are going to bear the brunt of the angry travelers.

Pretty good for airport food. Let’s just say it’s way better than eating fast food burgers.
I ordered a burger during breakfast hour because I think the breakfast menu food is totally not worth the money. The burger tastes decent, and you can customize what you want to have in the burger. The fries are really good and tasty, freshly made, but pricy and in small portion.

I don’t expect a lot from airport food, so while I was wary of the 2 star rating, I didn’t think it would be intolerable. I ordered my burger with bacon, blue cheese, spicy aioli, lettuce, and tomato. I waited for about 20 minutes for my number to be called. The expected wait time was 15, so 20 wasn’t extraordinarily bad. Then I heard the next two orders after mine called. Mine was skipped altogether. I hear the order lady say something to the cook about it, and both assured me that my burger was coming next. It did. Actually, no it didn’t. Some random burger came, bearing no resemblance to the one that I had ordered. At this time, it was too late for me to wait another 20 minutes for them to remake my order, so now I am sitting hangrily waiting to board, grateful that I packed myself a slice of sweet potato pie. Don’t waste your time at this place. The terminal may have limited options, but I am sure that any of them are better than this one.

Service and cleanliness is HORRIBLE. Just being seated I thought I was putting someone out of their way… Once I ordered, the food came and our drinks didn’t come out. We ordered milkshakes they didn’t come out with the food so we ate almost our entire burgers without a drink but I called for a server and someone came and we finally got water. They won’t check on you unless you call. Tables weren’t being cleared off and patrons were clearing tables as they were seated at them because the remaining food was sitting there. Tables weren’t being wiped down. Absolutely disgusting.

Don’t do it!!! You’re tired, you’re hungry. And the first place you see at Terminal C Laguardia after TSA gauntlet is Custom Burgers. But like an animal caught in a trap, if you go for this option, you are tied up for 20 minutes minimum for a mediocre burger served with the maximum of uncertainty. But who’s in a hurry or stressed out at an airport, huh?
It starts with walking up to a clean (for an airport) ipad looking order thing. You figure, sure I’ll do that. Now that you’ve ordered the puzzlement begins: You don’t pay immediately. You need a receipt printing 10 feet away. Make sure you take the receipt or you are doomed. It has the 8 digit code number (they think this is Five Guys, but it is not!).
Now the wait begins. There is no board or screen telling you what burgers are up yet.
You eventually learn from other victims of the ipad-​without-​cash-​register/​visa swipe thing that you can pay and come back. But should you? You have to wait for them to call out your number — by very unhappy employees. And there are other stations for sushi etc. with the same idiotic checkout.
When you try to pay the ‘self pay’ stations — located 100 feet away along the magazine racks — are during busy times kaput. There’s someone else’s order up.
Joe Biden was right: LaGuardia is third world. American and Delta should raise holy hell about how awful this is (it matches current American/​US Air flight services). WALK FARTHER INTO TERMINAL C. You are better off if you are in a hurry buying a pre-​made sandwich or sitting at the bar past C-​42.
Shake Shack is really good. This is no Shake Shack by any stretch. The woman next to me waited 20 minutes for a shake — that’s it. The employees here don’t care. This is a dining circle of hell out of Dante.

Maybe it’s just me but when a product has a «by so and so» name attached to it, I have very high expectations. The marketing was great, the prices were exorbitant, and the technology impressive. The taste was subpar, the size was laughable, and the service was suspect. What did I pay for???
The set up is that you sit at a table and order your food using the iPad supplied on each table. You pay at your table as well and are prompted to tip at the same time. Again, I’m thinking it’ll be worth it so I tip in faith. Big mistake. When my food finally comes, I have onion rings (I thought the combo came with French fries but I obviously missed that completely). It was my fault that I got onion rings thinking I was getting FF, but it was not my fault that the OR’s were TERRIBLE. They were even fried differently. Some of them looked to be battered, while others were not. It was like getting OR’s from two different restaurants, both terrible!
The server was nice enough to offer to bring me FF instead and I took her up on the offer. In the meantime, I ate the burger (in about 6 slow bites). Kids meal kinda stuff. I had a plane to catch and did not want to end up with a cold burger and hot fries so I continued to eat. I was packing my things and polishing off my drink when the server passed me. I stopped her to let her know not to worry about the fries. She apologized and offered to hurry them but. .. I was done (literally and figuratively). Can tips be refunded?
In a nutshell: Walk on by (in my Dionne Warwick voice)!

This is a burger from an airport food court stand so there’s that. Much higher quality than McDonald’s and the fries were crinkle cut reminiscent of shake shack.
Staff meanders around with little urgency like typical fast food staff and its airport expensive but it’s a decent burger you can get pretty quickly.

So the dining is in a semi-​private area in the food court. You basically grab your own table with an iPad and you order from the menu on there. I would say the price is high, but it’s an airport.
Anyways, I got the Chicken and bacon burger with fries, and separately a Diet Coke. What’s interesting is that the Combo (offers different burgers) is actually more money than if you bought the items separately. Kind of odd. In any case, within a minute of ordering, the waiter brought out my Diet Coke. The burger and fries took a full 20 minutes to arrive, which is kind of slow for an airport. The burger looks a bit sad, unlike the picture of it. There were no tomatoes or lettuce. However, it actually tasted OK. Fries were decent.
Overall, a little overpriced for the size, but it’s probably one of the cheaper places at the airport too. The food court is a nice place to dine — less sterile than a typical airport food court.

For breakfast with my wife before a morning flight. Pricey but that’s expected at an airport. Locked down iPads act as your menu. If you are paying with one card you have to order from the same iPad as your neighbor.
I ordered an omelette ($ 14) and wifey ordered pancakes ($ 16) with maple syrup and the order went through. Guy waiter came over and informed us they were out of maple syrup and gave the choice of strawberry syrup or to EAT THE PANCAKES DRY. Not being a fan of either of those options, we asked to change her order to a bagel and peanut butter. Waiter warned us it was «impossible» to adjust charges to my credit card for the much cheaper bagel (sure) to scare us out of changing the order but I was willing pay $ 16 for a bagel with peanut butter just to stop talking to this guy.
Waiter came back and huffed and puffed that he was going to get in trouble from the cook because the pancakes were already made (in under 3 minutes??) and we politely told him that was not our problem and he went back to the cook.
Magically when the food came, which came ridiculously fast, the pancakes arrived with maple syrup!!! It seemed he either didn’t look hard enough initially or didn’t feel like removing the seal from a new fresh bottle?
Food was not as good as Any Diner Ever, the portions are small and it was expensive. Usually when a place is at least 1 out of 3 for my personal criteria of Tasty/​Full/​Price, I won’t complain. But this place is 0 for 3.
Positive: We will likely joke about the Maple Syrup Incident for a couple of weeks. You can charge your phone at your table with both regular and USB outlets and the wife likes the bistro lights. Whatever that is.

I should have read the reviews before ordering! Forgive me Unilocal cause I have sinned.
I should have known I need to look for another place to have dinner after I sat down the the table was a mess. Dirty, sticky and not suitable to eat on. After 10 min the waiter arrived and passed a wet cloth (which looked even dirtier) on the table…
I ordered the Americana burger well done with the thought that even if it wouldn’t be good at least they will kill al the germs. The burger was dry and was served with no veggies at all. Who heard of a burger that isn’t even served with a lettuce, tomato or a pickle?!? There wasn’t even an option to add it to it.
The only thing that was good was the fries and that’s why I gave 2 stars and not one.
Move on and find a different place to have dinner while waiting for your flight

STAY AWAY UNLESS YOU WANT FOOD POISONING!
Against my better judgement, I opted to eat at the airport before my flight out. Your order is placed through an iPad and many of the items (i.e. meatball parm) was nowhere to be found. I ended up ordering the fish with pickles and tartar. I found that the food came out within a reasonable amount of time and if you aren’t there when your order is called, good luck finding someone up front. I think the original instructions said to order, walk to the desk and pay, and come back to pick up with a stamp. Noone asks for the stamp so I picked up my food and paid after.
The sandwich was sad looking, pickles overfried, and tartar was somehow smacked on the corner of the 4inch bun. This was the only thing I ate that afternoon other than fruit and judging by the fact that 3 people who had the same dinner as me are fine… I’m almost certain that this joint was the reason why I am currently on my deathbed and the bathroom is my best friend.

How does such a major airport have such limited food choices?
You have to order from a machine. Then you take your receipt to the other end of the «food court» to pay. Then you come back and wait.
I had a single burger, southern style with bbq sauce and fried pickles. I loved the concept, but the flavors weren’t there.
I also had a strawberry shake that tasted horribly artificial.
I think this place would like to be a «Shake Shack» or «Burger Fi» with their fancy burgers and shakes, but it’s nowhere near. However, until they update the terminal options I don’t know what other choices you have.