Salumeria Prima

I had a grilled cheese sandwich, I believe it had 3 kinds of cheese and tomato. Can’t say it was outstanding, but can’t say it was bad, either. The bread is supposed to come from Balthazar and it seemed authentic. The sandwich was served with a side salad; a very small portion of mixed greens with balsamic vinaigrette.
The iPad ordering system is a bit strange and one of the iPads at our table wasn’t working. The ordering process is a bit cumbersome but once I placed an order, my food came in a reasonable amount of time.
If I had a flight near this restaurant, I’d eat here again. I wouldn’t go out of my way to seek it out if my gate was further away.

What a terrible business model!
Order from iPads at your table and wait for your items. No customer service at all. They just dropped the stuff off and left. Half the customers in the place were having trouble ordering from the iPads!
The pea soup was tasty, but my wife was coughing for a drink and couldn’t get a water for anything.
Pass up this place and eat off the floor instead, you’ll probably have a better experience!

Stay away.
$ 9 oatmeal means really bland, over cooked steel cut oats with 5 REALLY thinly sliced pieces of bananas.
I don’t like nuts and asked for nuts off. Fairly sure the chef just scraped the nuts off an already made plate… Why would you have plates of oatmeal already made is puzzling
*sigh*

I am known for many things — patience, kindness, understanding… rage is not one of them. And yet, today, that is exactly the quality I exuded throughout my god-​awful experience dining at Salumeria Prima while waiting to fly to Chicago.
To be clear, Salumeria Prima is not a real restaurant. Have you ever heard of it? Of course you haven’t. Nor have you ever heard of any of the «new and improved» dining options that now line all of Terminal C in Newark Airport. What they have done here is force out all of the name-​brand restaurants and chains, including standards like McDonald’s, and classic NYC offshoots such as the Grand Central Oyster Bar, and the Caliente Cab Company. (Neither of which were particularly memorable, to be fair.)
All of these places have now been replaced by a series of generic and faux sushi bars, gastropubs, beer gardens, and the like — thanks to a company called OTG, whose mission is to «transform the airport experience.» Well, they’ve accomplished that. Terminal C has been transformed into the worst possible airport experience you could ever imagine.
You may have had one of these transformative experiences yourself if you recently traveled through the area. All of the «restaurants» require ordering through an iPad that almost never works. Tips are requested in advance of service. No matter what fake establishment you’re in, there’s commonality and overlap in all of the menus as if to subtlety remind you that there’s some big central kitchen hidden in the terminal cranking out all of their terrible and overpriced food and drink. $ 20 for a Bulleit Manhattan that the bartender doesn’t even know how to make correctly? Eek! Methinks not.
Worst thing about Salumeria Prima was that the place was infested with flies and gnats. And no, they were not just visiting from other parts of the airport. My attempt to eat an antipasto plate and sip a drink was interrupted by the need to constantly swat away these flying little pests. They were, literally, all over the place. I finally just gave up and left. And of course, I needed help from the server because the iPad card scanner wouldn’t work.
Unfortunately, OTG will somehow manage to be successful because they’ve taken all choice away and replaced it with the façade of choice. The sad reality is that travelers now have no choice but to line OTG’s coffers or go without food and drink while waiting for their flights. And because everything is so incredibly and grossly overpriced, they’ll always have enough money on hand to buy more iPads that will surely fail 90% of the time.
Just another chapter of Newark Airport’s decline…

First I would like to commend the staff. Staff were attentive and helpful in a format that is fundamentally flawed. Staff had two hands tied behind their back due to the ordering system and overall food quality.
The iPad ordering system functions as if in beta test mode. There were problems at initiation when it could not read my boarding pass. The first iPad failed. Ordering was fine but it is cumbersome to place the food order the without going through checkout where you determine a tip amount. I found it odd to get to and 18.5% tip approval screen before seeing food or any human interaction. I ordered and paid for the stuffed dates and later learned they were not available.
The food was nowhere near consistent with the upscale format and pricing. The pea soup tasted like basic canned soup with a packaged lobster topped piece of toast. The bruschetta was basic with hot sauce to mask the ingredients. My club soda come without lemon or lime. I left the United Club for real food and would have done much better sticking with the «free» cheese and crackers.
The restaurant needs the touch of real chef.