Ivory Room Piano Bar — Restaurant in Madison

When i first heard about "dueling pianos" at the ivory room i thought it was an awesome concept and a great idea. i should have stopped there. The cover charge is $5.00, which is fairly cheap for a night of fun, however if you want to request a song you need to pay them even more money with your request, and the pianist said they would wad up you "suggestion" if there was no money attatched. that was my first pet peeve. 2., only go here if youre over 35 and like older songs. i went here to celebrate my 25th birthday and i knew exactly ONE song they played all night. 3. the drinks werent good. my bf ordered a rum and coke and it was pretty much straight up coke. the server brought my friend the wrong beer, and they pack the building to capacity and the servers take FOREVER to bring you a drink. 4. its a great location if you want to surround yourself with rude, older couples making out and practically making babies in front of you. i was seriously disgusted and when we mentioned to our waitress that the older couple making out in front of us, who couldnt stand up straight without a wall behind her dropped her wine glass ( which broke and spilled wine all over my friends jacket) they didnt cut them off at the bar or clean up the broken glass. 5. the pianos are on one end of the bar, so the likely hood of you seeing them is slim to none. we got there right at 830 when they open (825 to be exact) to make sure we could get good seats, which we did, but like i mentioned before, they pack it to capacity and people came and stood right in front of us so we couldnt see anyways.

my suggestion is to skip this place and have a great time elsewhere in one of madisons other great...

Highly recommend the bar itself, it's one of the best places in Madison to have a wonderful time! The musicians are so talented, so funny, the bartenders are awesome, however, just DON'T RENT THE DUELER'S DEN. Unless the description has changed, I rented it for a birthday party because it said we'd have "attentive cocktail service" and the server was terrible, we basically waited on ourselves by going to the bar all night. Essentially we paid a couple hundred dollars for seating that we were there early enough to have gotten similar seats on our own. I took the time to very respectfully request a partial refund from the owner/management due to the false advertising and after my request was finally acknowledged I was told I would be called and never was. I attempted to make contact a few more times before basically saying "ok, I want 1/3rd of my money back for paying for something I didn't get." No response. Gave it until after the holidays before writing my review, just in case "being busy" was a factor in being ignored. Again, I highly recommend this place for a great time but just get there early and you don't need to spend the extra money to have the same experience on the other side of the pianos. Spend your money on tips for the musicians and for the bartenders, because they are what make it a fun place to be. I can't bring myself to put less stars despite the poor customer service from the top and the server. I want people to go, experience it, but just don't waste your...

We showed up at 10. Got drinks decently quick and worked our way to a table in the back that just got up. Flagged down a waitress and tipped big early to ensure service the rest of the night. After an hour, security invited us behind the pianos since the party for the night didn’t show. 2 songs later the party showed and we were asked to go back to general seating except people had already filled in our previous table. So we closed our tab and left because that is AWFUL CUSTOMER SERVICE. The worst part is as the party was filing in, I heard them say they’d be there a half hour. Too bad, we would have been there til time bar time and as a previous waitress I would have continued to tip well. As I was leaving I made sure to share my grievances. The bartender took offense assuming I didn’t tip her. I assured her I did as it wasn’t her fault. Bar staff and musicians were great. AWFUL MANAGEMENT!!! We will never be back. You can’t upgrade and then double downgrade a customer. Will remove this location from my sisters upcoming bachelorette party I was planning. This was going to be a great evening and now we’re driving home very sour. Step up Ivory Room. I was surprised to hear Madison locals not knowing there was a piano bar, but after tonight, I will forget about your existence as well.

Update: Thanks for the update! A couple girlfriends were looking to attend a couple weeks ago. I respectfully declined but knowing it's new ownership, I'll gladly tag along. Thank you for...