Budapest Jazz Club — Restaurant in Budapest

A cool venue to enjoy jazz music. This is a venue of three distinct parts - their website doesn't really explain it properly. There is a cafe area - this is the large reception room into which you initially enter the club, with a bar at the back. There is a small ticket office to one side of this space, at which you can buy tickets for that evening's music. On the left-hand side of the bar and up some stairs is the Bistro restaurant - this is located in a space above the backstage area. The food in the Bistro is good, and not that expensive. Later in the evening on Fridays and Saturdays, the Bistro hosts the late night free-to-enter jam sessions. The third part of the club is the main auditorium, located on the other side of the cafe bar - so if you're eating in the Bistro, you'll need to finish up and go back across the club to sit in the auditorium (although it's worth noting that the performance in the auditorium is relayed via a projection screen into the Bistro so you can enjoy it from your table if that's what you want to do). The auditorium has a number of tables for those arriving early enough to snag one, with several rows of seats at the back. It's not a particularly big room - probably just about the right size to create that slightly more intimate jazz club experience.

The only very minor quibble we had were that we couldn't buy tickets when we arrived as the ticket office hadn't opened and we also couldn't get them from our Bistro waiter having sat down to dinner even after the box office had opened - we had to go down to the ticket office and get them ourselves. This was absolutely not an issue, and it seems a bit pedantic to mention it, but it came across as a bit disjointed that the tickets couldn't be organised by the waiter/charged to the meal account. That, alongside that it was a bit hard to understand from the website how the club hung together in terms of rooms and food and drink options, was it.

We enjoyed our time in the BJC - would recommend a visit if you are in Budapest and feel the urge to catch some jazz/blues. Enjoy...

A lively and lovely place that is visited by different kinds of people, as it serves as a concert hall with daily programs as well as a local hub, a coffee and meeting point for the folks living nearby.

Many will not even buy a ticket for the concert, just jump in for a chat and a beer (they are one of the few places offering belgian Kriek from tap), while the background jazz music goes on. Interestingly, this background music that is broadcasted on monitors is different from what is just played on the stage. However, if you enter the restaurant part from the main hall, you can have a proper dinner while the actual program on stage is projected to the wall.

The best is of course to buy your ticket and enter the concert hall. Seats are occupied by the order of arrival, and are all looking to the stage (theatre arrangement), People don't talk here while the performance is on. Almost every artist of the very lively Hungarian jazz scene playes here, and from time to time international jazz stars can also be seen.

After the main concert a jam session starts in the dinner area. This is also played by professional musicians and actual students of the Budapest School of Jazz Music, but the tunes here are mostly evergreens of course, usually in a trio setup: piano, drums, bass.

Overall a very lively, busy place with nice and enthusiastic staff, quality jazz music every day and many local people dropping by. It is also one of the places being open until quite late so you can jump here after an other program too. Easy to reach by tram that works throughout the night. Highly...

This evening we were there with 5 persons. The service was a bit slow, but not annoying. After ordering food it took around 30 minutes for the first 2 dishes to be served without cutlery. The next 2 came 15 minutes later. After talking with the service they brought enough cutlery, and promised to ask the in the kitchen if the last dish could be served. This didn´t happen, so after waiting for another 20 minutes we asked for the bill. The bill came, including the not served dish. Of course we did not pay this, and the service took it off the bill without any difficulty and excused themselves for the bad service. Basically the service were nice people, the problem seems to be that they are not able to take care of their guests on an appropriate way, and efforts to get the people in the kitchen to do their job are without any success. This is called incompetency, and can be cured with education, being interested in your job, and having a routine in the process of restaurant serving. No problem if you are a starter and make mistakes. But not improving efforts after more than one friendly comment makes a bad mood. This was the last time...