Midtown Music Hall

If you're looking for a hip-hop dance club with good drinks, and descent music this is a nice place to try.  The wings also get a thumbs up from me.

Two days after seeing--but not quite hearing--my favorite singer play the stage at Midtown Music Hall in Chattanooga, my verdict on the place is still out.

This bar/restaurant/music hall is basically one long room split down the length of the room by a short wall into a (very lively, very busy) bar on the left and a restaurant section facing a stage on the right. We sat along the left edge of the right half for an acoustic show by Todd Snider. Both sides of the room were packed, with vocal Todd fans on the right side and a mostly college-aged crowd (more or less oblivious to the show) on the left.

In short, we barely heard the show. Most of the trouble stemmed from the fact that we were sitting really close to the bar side, right next to the short wall. (The Todd fans closer to the stage appeared to really enjoy the show, so the sound must have been at least somewhat better further away from the bar.) Since "Music Hall" is in the very name of this place, I left wishing that the "music hall"  proper could have been more fully separated from the bar as is the case in many music-oriented bars. The bar crowd wasn't obnoxious or rowdy, just too close to the music.

I cannot comment on the food, since we ate at a Greek restaurant on the way in (which was fantastic, by the way; see the review above), but the menu looked slightly more extensive than those of similar establishments. The space itself was clean, and the walls on the music/restaurant side featured posters with funnier-than-average celebrity quotes.