J Gumbo’s

Great food!!! Im a Louisiana boy and it blew me away. Five stars. Wish I could give six. Excellent service as well.

Stopped in on whim and were pleasantly surprised. Place was clean, staff was nice and the food was great. The portion sizes were large. I think next time we will get a half bowl for lunch. We will return to try out the menu more.

My favorite place! Recommend this place to everyone. Very friendly staff and good food! Always fresh. Enormous portions.

Full disclosure: I have family who reside in and all around New Orleans. I am no stranger to authentic Cajun cuisine.
With that being said, the menu here is hit & miss. Not much seafood is offered which is strange for a place marketing themselves as Cajun/​Creole. The Voodoo chicken, bourbon chicken, and Bumblebee stew are my personal favorites. You indeed get a TON of food for your money. The service is always friendly and attentive as well as prompt. Everything tastes spiced to what I would call a «safe» level which is quite mild for those who have had the real deal down south. For us folks here north of the Mason-​Dixon this is a nice alternative to everything else offered locally. You will get a tremendous value for your money. But if you’re like me you’ll find yourself reaching for the hot sauces to jazz it up a bit.

Ordered our drinks and looked at the menu. They have exactly one dish that contains seafood.
I’ll let that sink in.
One dish with seafood. (It’s the étouffée, with either shrimp or crawfish.) At a Cajun place. Jambalaya, gumbo, etc. — all without a hint of shellfish. They serve po’ boys, but none of them have shrimp!
We decided to go elsewhere for dinner.

I love Jay gumbos they have a very very good food one thing he could do is give you a little bit more garlic bread

J Gumbos is interesting for something different. I need to go back to give it an entirely fair review though because I wasn’t in love with whatever it was that I tried.
What I did like, was the portion size… man I could have eaten that meal for a few days! They are not stingy with the food they give you at all! I had some sort of chicken over rice, and the flavor just wasn’t there for me. It seemed sorta divey casual which I love, so the atmosphere is what won me over.
There are incredible paintings on the wall, and mardi gras themed decorations all over the place. Maybe I just haven’t had enough gumbo in my life, so maybe I’m not the best one to review this place. Our server was not very attentive, and I just wasn’t overly impressed with the place. In my opinion the A-​Ok rating is accurate.
I will give it another shot, and try something different next time. When I do I will write a new review with the pros and cons.

This place is great! Has a nice bar inside with a couple beers on tap and a decent bottle selection. The food is amazing! Crawfish étouffée, bumblebee stew and my favorite is the voodoo chicken which is the spiciest thing on the menu. The staff is friendly and attentive. I recommend this place to everyone!

Pretty good food at fair prices. Can’t say any of the two dishes we sampled blew me away (bourbon chicken, étouffée and gumbo) but they we tasty, the portion sizes large and prices fair. $ 10 bowl and pitcher of beer on the weekend seems like the real bargain.

Being married to a man who’s family all lives in the south and having experienced New Orleans and all the great food it had to offer, I wasn’t expecting too much. My husband and I were pleasantly surprised. Our waitress was wonderful and the food was even better.
One tip, get there early as they have limited jambalaya. After taking a seat and the server letting the kitchen know we were there, we almost left when we overheard the kitchen say they were out of jambalaya. We are really glad we didn’t! While figuring out if we were going to stay or head somewhere else, our server went to the kitchen and got us a plate of samples of a lot of the dishes. She also returned with a small bowl of jambalaya for us to taste (they didn’t have enough for a full order). My husband and I tasted and ordered the Voodoo Chicken and the Drunken Chicken. The jambalaya was great and we were just bummed we couldn’t have more.
The Voodoo Chicken is not for the faint of heart– it is wonderfully spicy and delicious. The Drunken Chicken was also amazing. The rice was cooked perfectly. Now I’ve eaten at restaurants without looking at prices and experienced sticker shock when receiving the bill, this is the exact opposite– it was less than $ 18.00 for our dinner and drinks and we have enough leftovers to feed us for at least another meal. Absolutely love this place and so glad we decided to stay.

My favorite for lunch. Great service and a great atmosphere. They have the best gumbo in Ohio!!!

J Gumbos is an original concept. This creole gumbo place is kind of a «nawlins» bar hybrid with gumbo served atop rice.
This place is well known for their Bumblebee gumbo which is light and flavorful. It’s won a number of Best Of awards here in Cincinnati.
Of the Fiery persuasion myself I usually go for something a bit spicier, but the bumblebee is well worth it on its own.
The bread served with your bowl is perfect. Buttered and toasted but still soft, it’s always tasty.
When it comes to dessert, I can’t sing highly enough about the bread pudding which is very nearly too sweet, but not quite. The cinnamon and spices are blended well.
If you’re up for a change I highly recommend checking this place out.

Was visiting the area, and found this place through Unilocal.Wish I had earlier in the week. I would have gone everyday for lunch. Loved it! If I were enduring an Ohio winter, I would be planted in this place 2 – 3 times a week. Its that good

Toward the end of last year, I won a gift certificate for J. Gumbo’s from the Food Hussy. Since it could only be redeemed at the Fairfield location, it took me nearly half a year to finally give it a try. Coincidentally my brother had purchased the same certificate from eversave, so we decided to all give it a try together.
Unlike other J. Gumbo’s locations, this one is not counter service and upon entering the front door I was told that I could sit wherever I liked. I attempted to grab a seat in a nearby booth, but my one and a half year old son decided he would rather be outside. He was immediately drawn to the set of cornhole boards outside, so we played around with those waiting for my brother and his girlfriend to arrive.
After their arrival we all sat down at an outside table and looked over the lengthy menu of Cajun styled bowls which are served over a bed of rice. My brother ordered the crawfish cheese dip appetizer ($ 5.50) while we continued to look through the menus. With thirteen different bowls available, we wanted to be sure to get a good variety. The appetizer arrived quickly, and though I didn’t sample any I was told that there was not a lot of crawfish in it, it was mostly a cheese based dip.
Since my certificate was good for $ 13 I decided to order two different bowls, hoping that my son would eat some of the food and that I would have enough to take home for lunch the next day. I decided to order the red beans & rice for him to try — slow cooked red beans with yellow onion, smoked sausage and Cajun spices ($ 6.99). Despite being a little dry, the dish was actually quite good. The sausage was thick sliced and the flavor was not too spicy. The serving was large enough that even after a few bites from the bowl, there was still enough for a full lunch for me and a couple of small lunches for my son.
For my dinner I went with the chicken red hot — tender chicken slow cooked with garlic, red onion and celery in a tangy Cajun Buffalo style sauce and topped with bleu cheese crumbles ($ 7.29). This was given a 3 out of 4 rating on their spiciness scale and it was definitely hot! There is only one bowl with a higher rating, the voodoo chicken, and I wonder if that would be much too hot for most people. The chicken red hot was filled with plenty of chicken (though not all of it was white meat) and the flavor was good. There was definitely a lot more buffalo seasoning than Cajun, so keep that in mind if you are looking for more authentic flavors.
I also had small bites of my brother and his girlfriend’s two dishes. The bourbon street chicken — tender chicken slow cooked in a lightly sweet butter-​hoisin sauce ($ 7.29) — was by far the least spicy of the bunch, and had a pleasant sweet flavor to it. It could have used a little more sauce, as the rice below the chicken was pretty dry. The drunken chicken — tender chicken with garlic, olive oil, stewed tomatoes and Cajun spices slow-​cooked with beer ($ 7.29) — was on the spicy side of things. This dish seemed a little more authentic tasting than the chicken red hot, so I think I would go with the drunken chicken on a future visit.
Overall the food was good and the prices are affordable. I would likely return if it weren’t so far from home. Perhaps I’ll try one of the franchise’s other locations, either downtown or Clifton.