Turntable Chicken Jazz

Midtown's Lunch Counter and What Changes After Dark

Midtown Manhattan has long operated on a split personality. By day, the blocks around 33rd Street and Seventh Avenue move at the pace of office workers, commuters passing through Penn Station, and tourists orienting themselves against the Empire State Building two blocks north. By night, the same streets thin out, and the restaurants that survive the transition are usually the ones that offer something different in each register. Turntable Chicken Jazz is a bar at 20 West 33rd Street in New York City, with a Google rating of 4.3 from 2,326 reviews and an average price of about $30 per person. It sits in that transitional zone and carries a name that already suggests it isn't trying to be the same thing twice.

The name itself does editorial work. Jazz implies improvisation and a certain looseness of format. Chicken grounds it in something specific and unpretentious. Turntable adds a layer that could mean vinyl, could mean rotation, could mean both, and that ambiguity is probably intentional. In a neighbourhood where most restaurant concepts are blunt instruments, a name this layered tends to belong to a place with a considered point of view about what it wants the room to feel like at different hours.

What Midtown Lunch Actually Looks Like in 2024

The lunch-versus-dinner divide in Midtown is sharper than in almost any other Manhattan neighbourhood. SoHo and the West Village retain foot traffic well into the evening; Midtown's restaurant energy concentrates between noon and two, then again from six to eight, with a notable drop in between. Venues in the 33rd Street corridor either lean hard into the lunch trade, quick service, value-anchored pricing, high throughput, or they position themselves as destination dinners that benefit from the neighbourhood's hotel stock and pre-theatre proximity to MSG and the Theatre District to the north.

Turntable Chicken Jazz occupies a more interesting position than either of those defaults. The address at 20 West 33rd places it close enough to the Empire State Building tourist corridor to capture walk-in traffic, but a restaurant with this kind of name is not primarily positioning itself as a tourist stop. The lunch service at a spot like this tends to carry a more casual energy: faster turnaround, a menu that rewards quick decisions, a room that tolerates noise. Dinner, by contrast, is where the jazz part of the name presumably earns its place, slower pacing, a room that has exhaled after the midday rush, and the possibility of actually hearing what's on the speakers.

Chicken as a Serious Subject in New York

New York's relationship with fried and roasted chicken has become genuinely competitive over the past decade. What was once the province of fast-casual chains and Korean fried chicken specialists has expanded into a tier of restaurants that treat the bird with the same sourcing rigour and preparation attention previously reserved for beef and pork. The Koreatown corridor, which runs along 32nd Street one block south of Turntable Chicken Jazz, has long anchored New York's Korean fried chicken scene, a relevant piece of neighbourhood context for any chicken-focused concept operating in the immediate vicinity.

A restaurant that names itself after chicken in this zip code is either competing directly with that tradition, consciously departing from it, or drawing on both. The jazz framing suggests the latter, less about a single technique or regional tradition and more about a mode of cooking that treats the subject as a flexible platform. That framing, if the kitchen delivers on it, positions the venue closer to the category of restaurants where the cooking has a point of view rather than a formula.

The Room and How to Use It

The 33rd Street address is logistically convenient in ways that matter for both lunch and dinner planning. Penn Station is a short walk west, making Turntable Chicken Jazz accessible for commuters who rarely venture this far east on the block. The Herald Square subway hub at 34th and Broadway puts the venue within reach of the B, D, F, M, N, Q, R, and W lines, as well as the 1, 2, and 3. For visitors staying in the cluster of Midtown hotels between 30th and 40th Streets, this is an easy walking-distance option that doesn't require a cab or a subway ride.

For practical planning purposes, Midtown venues at this price point and location tend to be walk-in friendly at lunch, particularly mid-week, and more pressured on Friday lunches when the corporate crowd extends its midday break. Dinner on weeknights around MSG event nights, the arena sits four blocks west on 33rd Street, can affect both foot traffic and wait times at restaurants in this corridor. Checking the MSG calendar before booking a Thursday or Friday dinner in this block is a habit worth developing.

Where Turntable Chicken Jazz Sits in New York's Broader Drinking and Dining Map

New York's cocktail and dining scene spreads far beyond Midtown, and for visitors using Turntable Chicken Jazz as one stop on a broader itinerary, the city's bar landscape rewards lateral exploration. Downtown, Amor y Amargo runs one of the city's most focused amaro and bitters programs in the East Village, while Angel's Share in the same neighbourhood has maintained a quieter, more considered Japanese-influenced cocktail format for decades. Attaboy NYC on the Lower East Side operates a no-menu format built entirely on guest preference, a different kind of improvisation than the jazz framing at Turntable, but a comparable commitment to the unscripted. In Williamsburg, Superbueno brings a more playful, Latin-influenced energy to its drinks program.

For those using New York as a reference point for American bar and dining culture more broadly, the same editorial approach that rewards places like Turntable Chicken Jazz, specificity of concept, neighbourhood embeddedness, resistance to formula, shows up in very different forms across the country. Kumiko in Chicago brings Japanese technique to a precise cocktail format. Jewel of the South in New Orleans anchors itself in historical cocktail traditions. Julep in Houston focuses on Southern spirits with editorial clarity. On the West Coast, ABV in San Francisco runs a wine and spirits hybrid format. In D.C., Allegory layers conceptual narrative into its drinks. And internationally, Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu and The Parlour in Frankfurt demonstrate how the same commitment to concept-driven hospitality translates across very different markets. See our full New York City restaurants guide for deeper coverage of the city's dining map by neighbourhood.

Turntable Chicken Jazz is located at 20 West 33rd Street in Manhattan, between Fifth Avenue and Broadway, accessible by multiple subway lines at 34th Street-Herald Square and 34th Street-Penn Station. Open daily, with hours that run Monday through Thursday from 12 PM to 12 AM, Friday and Saturday from 12 PM to 2 AM, and Sunday from 12 PM to 10 PM, with reservations recommended. MSG event nights can affect wait times in the immediate neighbourhood. Midtown lunch windows fill fastest between 12:15 and 1:30; arriving slightly outside those windows on busy days typically means a shorter wait.