Duel Piano Bar & Lounge

CLOSED. Now open as a bar
Called ‘The Tap.’ For dueling piano entertainment, go around the corner to «Howl at the Moon.»

It’s a cute concept but howl at the moon has them beat by a long shot. The food is awful, don’t even try it.
I had a groupon that was a gift from someone’s friend and it wasn’t even worth going that.

THIS PLACE IS CLOSED!
I emailed the coordinator Kerry a few months ago and we exchanged a few emails. I recently tried to get ahold of her. called, emailed… nothing. I called the venue a few times and left voicemails. SO RIDICULOUS. I finally got an email from Kerry this morning «Hello — Sorry for the inconvenience but Duel is no longer open for business.»
That’s it. WOW. Terrible. Terrible. Terrible.
PUT THAT YOU ARE CLOSED ON YOUR WEBSITE, REPLY EMAIL, VOICEMAIL… SOMETHING!

I received a Groupon as a birthday gift so my husband and I made a date night of it. We called and made a reservation, this venue is on the smaller side so I would suggest doing so if you still dare to go after reading my honest review.
To start, this is my first ever negative review on Unilocal so clearly something must be said of this place. I LOVE music, but unfortunately this place was mediocre at best. Here’s my reasons for one star.
Upon entering the venue it was hazy like, there was Christmas décor on the walls in August (?), our table was filthy/​sticky, furnishings are old/​tattered, and above all there was NO AIR CONDITIONING!!! It literally was a sauna, no exaggeration. When we were there the waitress and even the entertainers made jokes how hot it was and how the AC needed to be turned on. The waitress (who was very kind and did provide good service) when speaking of the heat sarcastically joked, «Ya, perfect night to wear all skin-​tight black»… We felt horrible for her as we were sweating just sitting down, yet she was the only waitress running around. I would quit if I were her — terrible working conditions. When we got home we began reading reviews and I now see that this is a constant problem. They literally have no AC and previous reviews suggest they did not have heat either. How is this place licensed? Also, you’d think they’d inform you when making reservation?
Moving on…
Music started at 8pm, but happy hour was from 5−8pm. The drinks were $ 3 and apps were ½ price. Drinks were a good deal and tasty. Just no menu??? Weird right? Again the waitress said «we’re in the process of revamping our menu». However, reviews from June are saying the waitress said the same thing? Two months to make a menu? This must be some menu!
As for food– I would not suggest eating dinner here. Food consists of pretzel bites (which we ordered and were good, but extremely deep fried), mozzarella sticks, nachos, sliders, & other fried fatty foods.
Like I mentioned, music started at 8pm. There were two performers. One named Brian and another who will remain nameless. Brian was a really good pianist and vocals were enjoyable. Nameless was pretty unfortunate, even the old lady next to us plugged her ears whenever he sang which provided much entertainment for us.
How the music works– The music played is all suggested songs. You can pay for mandatory song suggestions which my husband and I did two times. Unfortunately they didn’t know how to play both songs… We were let down. What musician doesn’t know Brian McKnight and Maclamore. Another fellow requested Ordinary People by John Legend (ya the PIANO driven song that’s been out for a decade) and both pianists confessed they did not know how to play it. Really? That’s sad. That’s like your job… Look up the dang chords.
Downstairs to the bathrooms. Dark and Filthy. They did have soap so that’s encouraging.
Not the classy place I envisioned, but staying positive as I think we may have sweat all the calories consumed! (; Needless to say, we won’t be returning.

Overcrowded, smells like a frat house, the layout is horrible. I went in stayed for one drink after paying a $ 10 cover. After sucking down the drink as fast as I could to get out of there I asked if I could have my cover back since I was in there less than 15 min. I was told the guy with the $ was not there so there was no way to get the $. This place is just bad all around. Avoid it!

Music is good. That’s about the only thing you can say. Bad drinks and service. Toilets and sink are stopped up. There’s a pool of pee in men’s room. This could be a good bar. It looks like a prime candidate for bar rescue. I guess this is why the bachelorette parties that can get into howl at the moon come here

Very talented piano players but that’s all I have to say that is good about this place. Was there last night for a girls night out, prepaid $ 35.00 for two hour open bar that included beer, wine, vodka drinks and gin and tonic. Website says well liquor not just vodka and gin. Drinks watered down. Service was bad, seats were ripped, bathroom disgustingly dirty! Won’t return or recommend.

Entertainment here gets all the stars. The musicians are talented and for the most part know how to work a crowd but the this vs that song (men vs women, Irish vs Italian etc) type of crowd tip fishing got annoying.
When we walked in the service was disorganized, the room was hazy like it was a smokers lounge and all the furniture is in a very sad state.
Friday night and there was no drink specials and no list of beers or what if anything is on tap.
I was told they had a full bar and could make just about anything and we managed to ask for something they were out of because that is how we roll.
The food was average to poor and took a really long time to appear.
The aforementioned furniture was in all sorts of states of disrepair. My chair half the upholstering was hanging off, which from my glance around seemed to be the state of the seating and our table was epic drink spillage wobbly.
I went to Jolly’s at its original location long ago and far away and it was by far a better scene.

Let me start by saying the piano players were amazing. They endgames the crowd, played songs audience members requested, and we’re very talented. They are what receive my stars.
The lack of a high star rating is due to the rest of my experience. The food was not good at all. $ 12 for pizza sauce in two cups and pieces of pita, $ 6 for peanuts in a bowl of honey and bacon pieces. Gross. They really need to invest time into a new chef or new menu.
The ambiance of the place was also very confusing: one of the World Cup semifinals was on a TV, Christmas decorations over the bar, NO A/​C and NO fans (so hot and not comfortable at all), the bathroom was a mess with a door that looks like it was just put on with a slab of wood… I could go on.
I will not be returning, and its upsetting because I love places with live music.

This place isn’t even worthy of one star. It was awful. Spend your money elsewhere. Some of our friends raved about this place, clearly this was before they switched owners. We got a groupon, it was dinner and music for 4 people. We had to make a reservation with Kerri. She was great to deal with. We got there, sat at a table. Tried to get a server for 10 minutes, nothing. Then some blonde waitress comes over and tells us we took someone’s table and we told her she was wrong since we had a reservation and someone sat us here. Tried to get a guy’s attention to be our server, he wasn’t paying attention. The blonde waitress finally came back and asked if we wanted drinks and food. Apparently their website is outdated because they are «revamping» their menus and don’t have anything, not even the rum buckets. Whatever, the food was mediocre at best. The nachos were cold and the pretzel bites were stale. There was no AC on, just fans blowing around. Never again. You’d think a place on Groupon would set up their game, have better service, and be more well managed… Not here.
The one star is for the decent cheesesteak egg rolls. I couldn’t leave a rating without any stars. That’s unfortunate.

We really liked it here. I’ve actually never been to a dueling piano bar before so, admittedly, I have nothing to compare this with, but the piano players sounded great. They had great personalities and really knew how to work the crowd. I was annoyed by the constant asking of money, but that’s to be expected.
We made the mistake of eating dinner here. The menu probably features some of the worst bar food we’ve ever had. Skip the food here and focus on drinks.

I L O V E piano bars! I was happy when I came across a Groupon for this place :)
(Groupon included: $ 15 for admission for two and $ 30 food except Saturday nights)
With the Groupon you have to make a reservation, but I believe it is recommended also.
The entrance is located up the stairs and to our dismay, on the door was posted a sign stating that the heat was out!!! Mind you this is the middle of winter!
Why, for goodness sakes, wouldn’t they call people who had a reservation and inform them of this?!
Well we decided to bare the cold for fun!
We walk in and are greeted by a security guard that takes our info and says a waitress will be over to seat us. The pianos are directly to the right.
So we wait… and wait some more… then finally a waitress comes over and says «have you been waiting long» as we are answering «yes» she is walking away stating that she’ll seat us in a minute. Ooook fine. After of 10 minutes of standing by the door the manager comes over and seats us at a table in front on the pianos. He states that he will bring us food and drink menus. Guess what?! He doesn’t! After 10 – 15 minutes of waiting I notice him leaning against the bar. I walk over to him and request the menus and of course he is apologetic and brings the menus.
The menu is standard bar fare so don’t go here thinking you’re gonna have a four course meal.
We ordered:
Beef sliders – They were decent, with fries that had a spicy kick but were good
Flat bread – apparently the type varies from night to night and we had the buffalo chicken flat bread. This looked and tasted like a bottle of hot sauce was dumped on the meal and I couldn’t eat it.
Pretzel bites with cheese – these were actually very tasty and I enjoyed them.
We ordered drinks as well but the service was slooooow
If you have not been to a piano bar or dueling pianos here is a brief explanation:
There are generally slips of paper atop the piano adjacent to a tip jar. You jot down the band and song you would like to here with a tip and place on top of the pianists piano. They then, will most likely, play your song unless they REALLY don’t like it. For example they played «No diggity» and Miley Cyrus while we there!
There were three pianist that rotated on the two pianos. They were all great and got the crowd involved (as best they could since it was sub zero in there!).
I literally didn’t take off my down coat the ENTIRE time I was there. Including when I went to the bathroom (which is downstairs FYI). I even had my gloves on the majority of the night.
The management decided to offer a free shot of Vodka, Tequila or Gin to the patrons for dealing with the heat. I don’t do hard liquor so I missed out on that but I still think it would have been better if they called us to let us know that the heat was out.
Since I do enjoy this scene I may go back but I will def call first!
(I gave three stars because the pianists were great but everything else was lacking)

I walk past the joint everyday and had no idea it was there. I had to go here with my wife’s friends who are from the burbs and whom picked the place. This aptly lowered my expectations. Even still, this place set a new low. I was told that when they tried to make reservations that there was nothing available. Later the Restaurant called them back and let them know we could have a spot. When we arrived we were the only people there.
While we were promptly greeted by the server it was more of «what do you want to drink» and less of «here are some cocktail/​beer/​wine menus to look over while I grab you some water» No big deal. I asked for menus and we ordered and got our drinks. On the second round we got our wine in snifter glasses, odd but not totally terrible. Funny if anything given that 4 of us ordered wine and on the second round they ran out of glasses… and we were still the only people in the bar.
We ordered some apps and asked when the pianist were going on since we had been there 45 mins and nothing was happening (the person that booked the reso was told the start at 5 or 6pm on Saturdays). We were told with a chuckle that no one gets here until 9pm. 40 mins later our apps came and we all ate our fresh from the freezer selection.
During all this we were freezing, the ladies had their gloves on and even I was cold (I run hot so that is a rarity). I asked the manager when he came by what the deal was since it was legitimately 50 degrees in the room. He said the heat has been broken since Thursday but don’t worry because when more people get here it’ll get warmer. Mind you, it was 10 degrees outside. When we left the manager and the hostess were shocked that we’d leave because we were cold. We went over to Misconduct and got warm had great food and drinks, then some folks went back over to this place around midnight. It was much busier and slightly warmer but still just as terrible otherwise.

I have been to a number of Dueling piano bars throughout the country, and to say that this is my favorite is an understatement. An excellent spot to take a date, but if you’re feeling adventurous, going by yourself, I can guarantee that you will make friends just by singing along to the requests made by you or other guests.
Howl at the moon has nothing on Duel Piano Bar.

I was here on Saturday night. The entertainment was fine but the bar service was a mess.
They ran out of limes by 10 o’clock — not a big deal but important to note given that it got progressively worse as the night wore on.
By 11 o’clock they ran out of single size drink glasses so they started serving mixed drinks in pint glasses. I asked the guy upon receiving my gin and tonic if this was a double and he told me it wasn’t and that they didn’t charge me as such. Nice — so you gave me 1.5 ounces of gin and 14.5 ounces of tonic and ice. When I finished the drink any buzz I had was now gone from the gallon of tonic I had just drank.
When we got the bill we noticed they charged us top shelf prices for bankers club gin.
10 dollar cover for amateur bar service.
+ 1 star for the crude and offensive ad lib birthday song lyrics.

Went here last night after we had dinner elsewhere. There was a $ 10 cover which didn’t include a free drink like some other reviews on here mention and it was a little steep if you ask me since the piano players are already working for tips. They asked if we had a reservation and we didn’t so they said they’d check if they could fit us in. They could and did, but not sure why they said that because the place never filled up for the entire time we were there. In fact it never got more than 75% full.
Service was decent. I ordered a vodka soda. There was no soda in it. It was basically watered down vodka so their soda gun must be broken.
Now for the piano playing. Don’t get me wrong, the guys know how to play and impressed our group with a wide variety of songs. However, our group was carrying their tips for the first hour of the night (which the piano players acknowledged to get other people to request songs and tip them) yet they insulted our song choices by asking if anyone else had a song request because they were sick of playing Whitney Houston and Meatloaf songs all night. That quickly depleted our number of song requests and tips. Additionally, they asked a girl celebrating her birthday to come up to the stage and stand there while one of the piano players stood behind her and made obscene gestures on top of her different body parts claiming it was «sign language.» I get that the girl allowed him to do that but I can’t believe they thought that was ok. Call me a prude if you want…
Lastly, we requested a couple more songs towards the end of the night which we waited a half hour to hear but they never played. Instead, their misogynistic girls vs. guys medley was the kicker so we left. Won’t be back.

Came to this establishment with a few friends after my friend’s wedding had ended. Who can’t resist alcohol and two pianos being played by very noteworthy musicians?! It was so exciting to hear modern popular music in piano form. My friend wanted to hear Billy Joel’s Piano Man and both of them played the song as a finale for the night. How exciting! You can totally see how dedicated the pianists were performing to each of the songs. They both sang in tune and really knew their songs. Audience participation was super high and it seemed that many people knew all the lyrics too.
There were numerous tables by the front «stage» but many people were dancing to the songs instead of sitting and chilling. I was dancing my butt off and it was great LOL. Everyone who was there was having a blast! Beer prices were pretty average — a corona was 6 $. Unfortunately, we didn’t eat any food because we were still full from the wedding lol. I did see many fried food entrees though.
I came home back to NJ and decided to download all my favorite songs in piano form. Its very relaxing to hear and now its in my car audio system. :) So if you don’t want to hit up a loud, dark club, come to the Duel Piano Bar! Super exciting and thrilling to be part of the audience!

Still am not sure why this place is a ghost town. Other than it being a little off the grid in terms of the bars around it since it’s away from the sidewalk, am I missing something?
Came here Saturday after my visit to the movies up 40^th & Walnut. $ 2 High Lifes this night. Brian was here again with another gentleman. Other than a few beers, we also decided to get the Cruzan Punch bucket to share. We both definitely got a buzz and it was mixed well. Def worth the twelve bucks. Would of stayed longer, but, my poor babylove hasn’t been feeling well. :(
See ya next time, Duel!

The piano isn’t properly tuned, the pianist/​singer is singing out of key, and it seems that he is butchering as many classics as possible. Also, the acoustics aren’t very good– they could use some balance. They seem to confuse volume with quality. Seems to be a crowd pleaser with people in their 60s and those who are very drunk. You actually need 2 – 3 drinks to only find the music «bad». Rating was lower before I had two drinks. Would give negative if I could.
Please don’t make the mistake that I did– do not come here for your bachelorette party. I beg you.

Why the bad reviews??? The drinks were strong and cheap and the music was great! The atmosphere was nice and not to crowded. My friend and I grabbed a table and were entertained for the evening. There was a $ 10 cover, but it came with a free coupon for a drink… so it really was like a $ 3 cover charge. The staff was prompt and friendly. If I am ever in PA again… I’d go back.