"We made our first visit to J Gumbos on a whim. We hadn't heard anything about it, but we love Cajun food. We both ordered the Lafitte bowl (portions come in half or full bowl sizes). The full bowl is a generous-enough amount of food, even for $8. The bowl came with a choice of bread; we both took the garlic bread.\n\nThe Jean Lafitte bowl is half corn stew (sweet, cream-based) and half chicken stew (spicy, tomato-based). The corn stew was far too sweet for either of our palates (aka Bumblebee Stew, per the menu). The staff warned us that the chicken stew was extremely hot (aka Voodoo Chicken), but we found it only edging toward spicy. Fortunately, there was hot sauce on the table. \n\nWe had a choice of adding toppings of cheese, sour cream, jalepeno slices, green onions, and seasoning.We also had a choice of white or brown rice as the base (corn chips are another option). The rice was a decent texture in each case (with the brown cut to a finer grain), but the rice-to-stew ratio was off: way too much rice. The chicken in the chicken stew was finely shredded and there wasn't enough meat to make it very substantial. However, the ingredients were fresh (something that can be hard to find in campustown, where many places serve pre-frozen and re-heated fare) and the recipes not far off the mark -- if modified to reduce the protein for costs and appeal to a public not comfortable with more authentic, stronger Cajun flavors. The bread was nothing special: commercial and lacking in texture or flavor.\n\nOverall: The food was decent, but not good or great. For the quality of the food, we each agreed we'd give it a 5 out of 10.\n\nJ Gumbos is a national chain, with franchiser-owners, with the next closest located in Bloomington, IL. At the Urbana location, the staff were friendly and the restaurant was clean and comfortable: a step up from a crowded fast food environment."^^ . "0"^^ . "3"^^ . "0"^^ . . "1"^^ . "2014-08-16T00:00:00"^^ . . .