and now I remember why Virgin is my #1

or: "Greetings from the Swiss Business Class lounge at Newark"

...where my evening dining choice is a soggy slice of processed cheese, some crackers, old pickled olives, and limp salad leaves. Thats it.

Wine obviously carefully chosen for the "GREAT VALUE!" sticker on each bottle. I kid you not.

Last time they get $3000 of my money even if they do go non-stop to Zurich. I'll route through London next time.

Oh that's a shame as I've done a couple of pairs of flights on LX and have found them excellent.

I spent a fruitless 3 hours in BA F lounge at LHR T5 on Friday and that also reminded me ( not that I needed reminding) why I always fly VS where possible.
It was no better than the StarAlliance shared lounge I used to frequent in my pre-VS days. I was surprised at how un-First class it was.
The food was on a buffet (similar to Welcome Break services) with chicken slop, pasta slop and beef bourguignon (minus the beef - although as a mushroom bourguignon it was not bad). Rice or baked potato. That's it - in F !!

Let's not forget that the CH is a J lounge. We all may have niggles with VS but the base product we pay for is still the best.

Have to say that in catering terms, the Emirates lounge now outshines all the other lounges at Heathrow. And the lounge for me is not a determining factor in my flight choice - I had to do a few Cape Towns in January and February, and the choice was really VS or EK - the former has a nice lounge for say two hours, then 20+ hours on a dog-eared aircraft with - sadly IMHO - mediocre crew, or 2 hours in a nice lounge followed by 20+ hours of ICE, superb inflight catering, a great crew, personal greetings, and a private cabin - with a shower on two of the sectors.

Oh, and EK First was 40% cheaper than Virgin Business....

Hey ho. Each to their own.

EK isn't much use if you're crossing the pond though as the OP was?

EK get slated plenty on other forums. Each to their own I suppose.