Priority Pass Restaurant Credit Is Disappearing: Which Cards Still Have It in 2026

For a few good years, the smartest thing in your Priority Pass membership wasn’t the lounge at all. It was the restaurant credit — a near-free meal at a real airport sit-down, charged to nobody. You skipped the fluorescent buffet, ordered a burger and a beer at the gastropub two gates down, and watched the bill shrink to almost nothing at checkout. I spent five years at Travel + Leisure watching benefits like that get trimmed a footnote at a time, and this one is the clearest example I know of a perk being quietly dismantled, card by card.

Here’s who still has it in 2026, who lost it and exactly when, and the one date almost every “best cards” article on the internet currently gets wrong.

What the Priority Pass restaurant credit actually is

If you only know Priority Pass as lounges, this is the part worth learning. At participating airport restaurants, cafes, and bars, your membership isn’t a discount or a reimbursement you claim later — it’s a credit applied on the spot. According to The Points Guy, the standard allowance is up to $28 per person toward food and drinks, with some locations and sources citing $30, and tip is not included.

The detail that makes it genuinely good: a guest covered by the same membership gets their own credit, so two of you can combine for roughly $56 at a single table. You check in with the Priority Pass app or your card exactly the way you would at a lounge, and the restaurant knocks the credit off your bill before you pay. For two people and a light meal, that often means walking out having spent nothing but the tip.

The real cut timeline — and the date most 2026 articles get wrong

The cut didn’t happen all at once, which is part of why it’s so widely misremembered. American Express removed Priority Pass restaurant access across its portfolio back in 2019. Capital One pulled it from the personal Venture X at the start of 2023. That left the Chase Sapphire Reserve as the last of the big three to still cover airport dining — until it didn’t.

On July 1, 2024, Chase ended it. In its own statement, quoted by The Points Guy, the bank wrote: “Beginning July 1, 2024, Chase Sapphire Reserve, J.P. Morgan Reserve and The Ritz-Carlton™ Credit Card cardmembers will no longer have access to restaurants, cafes and markets participating in Priority Pass Select.” The lounges were untouched; only the dining, café, and market access disappeared.

Read that date again, because here’s the correction that matters: it was 2024, not 2025. A wave of newer, AI-assembled “best cards for 2026” pages confidently reports the Sapphire Reserve losing restaurant access on July 1, 2025. That’s simply wrong, and it’s a useful tell — if a guide can’t get the single most-cited date in this story right, I wouldn’t trust its card list either. Chase’s statement is dated to 2024 and was corroborated at the time by Thrifty Traveler, OMAAT, and Forbes Advisor, among others.

The most recent domino fell in 2025. According to Upgraded Points, the Capital One Venture X Business card lost Priority Pass restaurant access effective October 31, 2025; cardholders received a direct email telling them their Priority Pass Select membership was expiring and that they’d need to re-enroll through the Capital One app. That one stung because the business version had been the last Capital One card standing for restaurant access.

Which cards still include Priority Pass restaurant access in 2026

The list is short and getting shorter, but it isn’t empty. As of 2026, these cards still carry the restaurant credit:

• Bank of America Premium Rewards Elite. The strongest pick left. FrequentMiler, citing Doctor of Credit, confirms the card’s Priority Pass Select membership “does have the restaurant benefit,” and pairs it with the UBS Visa Infinite as the best current cards for Priority Pass dining. It also includes unlimited lounge guests (subject to each lounge’s capacity) and up to four full Priority Pass memberships you can gift to other people — genuinely unusual generosity in a benefit everyone else is cutting.
• UBS Visa Infinite Card. Also still carries the restaurant credit, and it’s FrequentMiler’s co-recommendation alongside the Bank of America card. It’s a premium card most people won’t come across by accident, but if you already hold it, the benefit is intact.
• Citi Prestige Card. Grandfathered only. Existing cardholders keep restaurant access, but Citi closed the Prestige to new applicants, so this one’s off the table unless you’re already holding it.
• JetBlue Premier World Elite Mastercard. The rare new entrant. Launched in 2025 by Barclays with a $499 annual fee, its Priority Pass Select membership includes restaurant access — a Barclays representative confirmed as much directly, per Thrifty Traveler. It’s one of the only mainstream cards to add the benefit rather than cut it, and it’s still in place heading into 2026.
• U.S. Bank Altitude Connect ($0 annual fee) and Business Altitude Connect. The budget wildcard, with a caveat. Both include a Priority Pass Digital membership good for four complimentary visits a year, and multiple cardholders report using those visits at Priority Pass restaurants, not just lounges. The honest asterisk: U.S. Bank’s own product page doesn’t spell out restaurant access, so treat this as independently reported rather than issuer-guaranteed — confirm in the app before you rely on it.

Cards that still say ‘Priority Pass’ but no longer cover restaurants

This is where people get burned, because the Priority Pass logo still sits right there in the benefits list. If you carry one of these, you have lounge access and nothing more at the restaurant counter:

• American Express Platinum and Business Platinum
• Chase Sapphire Reserve
• Capital One Venture X — both personal and business

Treat every one of them as lounge-only for restaurant purposes in 2026. The Sapphire Reserve is the one people most often get wrong, probably because its lounge benefits are still strong; if you want the full picture of what Chase Sapphire Reserve lounge access really covers, that’s a separate, still-generous story — it just doesn’t include a dime of restaurant credit anymore.

And the erosion isn’t limited to dining. From February 1, 2026, per The Points Guy, Capital One stopped comping guests for personal Venture X holders at Priority Pass lounges — it’s now $35 per guest, per visit, with the Venture X Business card the lone exception at two free guests. If you’re tracking which plastic still earns its keep, I’ve mapped out how many guests each card actually lets you bring separately, and Capital One’s own rooms — like the Capital One Lounge at DFW — now carry their own per-guest fees too.

Don’t confuse this with Chase’s new $300 Sapphire Reserve dining credit

One more source of confusion, and it’s Chase’s fault for the timing. The Sapphire Reserve got a major refresh on June 23, 2025. Per Chase, the annual fee jumped from $550 to $795 (authorized users went from $75 to $195 each), and the card picked up a brand-new $300-a-year dining credit under its “Sapphire Reserve Exclusive Tables” program, redeemed at OpenTable-linked restaurants. Existing cardholders kept the $550 fee until their first renewal on or after October 26, 2025, according to Upgraded Points; new applicants paid $795 from day one.

Do not confuse that $300 credit with the old Priority Pass restaurant benefit. They’re unrelated. Exclusive Tables is a Chase-run dining program at a specific set of partner restaurants — mostly higher-end, reservation-driven, and nowhere near an airport gate. The Priority Pass restaurant credit the Sapphire Reserve lost in 2024 was airport-only and worked right there in the terminal. Same card, same word “dining,” completely different perk.

How to actually use the restaurant credit at the airport

If you do hold a card that still includes it, using the credit is simple once you know the sequence:

1. Check the app before you fly. Open Priority Pass and see whether your airport actually has a participating restaurant. There are far fewer dining locations than lounges, and plenty of airports have none at all.
2. Tell the host you’re paying with Priority Pass before you order, not after. It’s a check-in, like a lounge — not a receipt you submit later for reimbursement.
3. Scan your card or digital membership at the start. The credit — up to about $28 a head — comes off the bill automatically.
4. Tip on the full pre-credit total. The allowance covers food and drink, not gratuity, so your server should be tipped on what you actually ordered.
5. Keep your boarding pass handy. Some locations ask for your flight details at check-in, the same as a lounge.

If the restaurant credit matters to you, here’s the pick

If airport dining is the reason you’re shopping, the Bank of America Premium Rewards Elite is the cleanest answer right now. It still includes the restaurant credit, it’s one of the last cards offering unlimited lounge guests (capacity permitting), and it lets you gift up to four full Priority Pass memberships — exactly the kind of generosity the rest of the industry is walking away from. FrequentMiler lands in the same place, naming it and the UBS Visa Infinite as the current best cards for restaurant access specifically.

One honest caveat, because the whole point of this site is honest numbers: don’t churn into a premium annual fee for a single perk the entire industry is actively cutting. If a lounge-and-restaurant card fits the rest of your travel, great. If you’re mostly chasing the free burger, run the math first — a standalone Priority Pass membership cost might pencil out better than another $400-plus annual fee, especially once you count the guest fees nobody advertises.

The restaurant credit isn’t dead yet. But it’s been demoted from a headline benefit to a footnote on a handful of cards, and the next few renewal cycles will probably thin the list further. Know which card you actually hold, check the app before you count on a meal, and don’t let a 2025 date on some listicle sell you a benefit that left the building in 2024.