Dizzy's Club — Restaurant in New York

No, jazz fans, this is not a dive. It is not an obscure, smoky basement club frequented by great musicians. It's not a stuffy, super-crowded room on Bleeker Street in the Village. Those things have their place, but so does Dizzy's. This is a modern, classy club with a spectacular location overlooking Columbus Circle and Central Park. It seems to send the message that Jazz deserves to be placed high up on a pedestal. The room is elegantly designed and it has beautiful decor and good service for food and cocktails. And it's located in one of NYC's great mixed-use complexes containing high rise buildings, a 4-story upscale shopping center, a Whole Foods Market in the basement, and several bars or eateries. I am describing the Time Warner Center, containing "Jazz at Lincoln Center" as one of its components. Jazz at Lincoln Center has 3 performance venues, and Dizzy's is the smallest, most intimate, and most impressive of the three. I have seen two great shows here during the past two years. It's easy to make the arrangements, too. You reserve your table by phone, with no payment necessary prior to the show. During the show you can order dinner, snacks, desserts and drinks. The cover charge for music (usually $35 or $40 per person) is added to your bill, and you pay your server for everything at the end of the show. Seating is mostly at tables, but there is also a bar with bar stools, and there are many other high seats along the edges of the room that have just a drink bar to rest your glass on. The sound is very good, thanks to a top-notch modern sound system. The setting (with Central Park visible through the glass wall behind the stage) is one-of-a-kind, and the performers from around the world are wonderful. It was on my bucket list to visit this jazz club. Well I did it, and now I go back again every year! Can't stay away! If I lived in NYC, I would go much more often. Visiting this building, this shopping center, and this club ... is a wonderful experience, and we love to do it during the holidays when the building has terrific decorations and holiday spirit. The club is not terribly expensive, either. If you want to impress your date with a night out on the town, give this a try. You won't be...

I was looking forward to taking my father who was visiting to Dizzy's as a surprise since he loves jazz and it was a bossa nova night. I should have seen the signs when reserving on the website didn't work, left countless phone messages, emailed customer service who got back days later saying someone would contact me (they never did). Luckily, my boyfriend was able to snag reservations for the later show.

We arrived 30 minutes before the show and there is a big line for reservations and a small line for walk-ins. Before the show they explained pricing - $25 per person for reservations, $45 for walk-ins. That seemed reasonable. Perplexingly, we saw more walk-ins get inside with great seats. Our seats? All the way in the back, near the entrance door on a chair. The staff had to pull over a seat for my dad where there was no seat because it was literally at the entrance. For all the hassle I had gone through to make sure we had reservations, it was laughable that we were given the absolute most inconvenient seats for viewing, hearing, drinking and eating. Another incredibly irritating part of an already infuriating evening of the evening was witnessing people who were walk-ins stand by the door arguing to get in without reservations get spots, which were actually infinitely better than where we were sitting (for the 10th time...with reservations).

But the best (worst) part of the night is when the bill came. Astronomical. They had charged us for walk-ins. WE HAD MADE RESERVATIONS IN ADVANCE. The waitress's excuse: "Oh, all reservations are charged as walk-ins." But - didn't they just announce before the show differently? Outright lying and misleading patrons. I have the phone calls, emails, to back it up. Hell, I even went to Dizzy's front desk days before to make sure we had reservations. The space and music was wonderful but all in all, a very disheartening experience and I felt very sorry for my dad as I had wanted to this to be the big surprise...

Maybe the view is amazing and the musicians are good but I didn’t even wanted to stay to enjoy it at all, because there’s such a big disorganization with the seatings. If you paid for a bar seating it should be in the bar, not next to the entrance door with the view of the wall , and you should lean for 2hours and half try to catch a glimpse of the show, that’s unacceptable. People were leaving their seats because of the disappointment of the seatings, I did to. We can clearly see that they’re used to people complaining about that issue, no matter how the performers are great this shouldn’t happen and apparently you need to know the musicians or be a regular to be taken seriously. It would have been much easier to higher the price and reduce the capacity so everyone can enjoy the performance not accept so many tickets then clearly the club doesn’t have the capacity for it. I stayed just for 20 min and I loved seeing other people rolling their eyes to the whole situation and the funny part you still had to deal with the waiters coming to you asking if you would like to enjoy anything from the menu… hahah I left of course lucky me the door entrance was next to me. Sorry for those regulars who apparently gave such amazing reviews to this place but seating is everything for a show or a performance. I rather go to any underground jazz bar in New York than this club. My advice higher your price and reduce your capacity...