Searching for “dinner with live jazz in Madrid” turns up two kinds of result. On one side, jazz clubs where you can get something to eat. On the other, restaurants that put a pianist in the background while you have dinner. They are different things, and neither is what happens at Harold’s one night a month.

The difference is the size of the room

Our concerts take place in the upstairs room, and that room is small. There is no raised stage, no separation between audience and band, no tables at the back where the sound goes thin. The musicians play in the same room where you are having dinner, a metre from the tables.

That has one obvious consequence and one less obvious one. The obvious one: capacity is small and tickets go fast. The less obvious one: it completely changes how the concert sounds. A small band playing jazz standards in a room like that does not need to amplify anything, and the result feels far closer to a French Quarter club than to a music venue.

What you eat while the music plays

The other half of the evening is the food, and we do not put on a watered-down special menu for the occasion: you eat what you would eat at Harold’s on any other day. Southern fried chicken, hand-breaded and fried to order, coated in sauces that are slow-cooked Louisiana dishes made in our own kitchen, potatoes cut that same day and homemade bourbon lemonade.

“We loved the jazz concert while eating New Orleans fried chicken. Because the concert is so intimate, you can see it from anywhere in the room. The whole thing really works — it is like being in a jazz club.”

The room: why the decoration matters here

The upstairs room is decorated like the rest of the house: wallpaper by the designer William Morris, antique mirrors, Budweiser neon over wood, crockery with no two pieces alike and low light on purpose. None of it is staging added for the jazz night: it is the everyday restaurant.

It is a faithful enough recreation that it has been used as a shooting location for jazz band music videos. When the band starts playing, the only thing that changes is the volume.

How to get tickets

Here is the practical part, and the reason a lot of people write to us having missed out. Because capacity is small, we do not announce dates on social media first: they go out by email to people subscribed to our concert alerts. The night usually fills up before the date reaches anywhere else.

Subscribing is free and used only for that. You can sign up on the live jazz page. The alert carries the specific terms for each date: timing, price and what is included.

If your visit does not land on a concert night

Jazz plays in the background in the dining rooms on every other day, and the menu is the same. It is not the same experience — a live band is a live band — but if you want to see what the place is about before booking for a concert night, any weekday is a good moment: fewer people, and a quieter room.