Degage Jazz Cafe

We were seated in a booth where my toddler immediately found a dead bug (large, like a beetle or bee) and started playing with it before I noticed. It wasn’t that big of a deal so I didn’t mention it to the waitress. What I did mention, however, was the mold and plastic wrap on the cucumbers on my salad. I got an apology from the waitress and (I guess?) the manager. That was it. While I don’t need a discount or a comped appetizer or dessert it would have been a nice touch. We won’t be returning.

Have heard a lot of good things about their food, but… had Sunday Mothers Day brunch there and it WAS NOT GOOD! The food (hot dishes) was cold and the flavor was very bland. Hopefully the good ratings came from the normal evening menu otherwise I’m really worried about the people rating this place. It will be a long time before we try it again.

We’ve been there several times over the last few years and have always been impressed with the food and the ambiance. It’s been about a year since our last visit and I was really looking forward to it. It’s not the cheapest destination but every time I’ve been there the food has been wonderful and memorable and worth the extra cost. That was then.
For four of us the bill came to almost $ 200 and that only included 1 drink a piece and 2 of those were draft beers. For $ 200 I have pretty high expectations and while the food wasn’t bad it was barely average and I can have average for $ 100 less or in some cases I think I can have better than average for $ 100 less.
We had a single appetizer, an artichoke cheese dip and it only included a few pieces of bread. They happily supplied more (and charged us for it). I asked if I could substitute soup instead of salad and was told it would be an upcharge. The upcharge was to charge full price for the soup and not bring the salad. The food was mostly cold and not particularly impressive or creative. The potatoes were a cold mostly flavorless lump. The entertainment not really up to prior standards.
Always in the past I’ve been blown away by the quality of the food and the artistic and flavorful creativity of what was put on the plate. Truly enjoyable. Now it is overpriced and only memorable because of the bill I’m going to get at the end of the month. I’m sorry to say I won’t be back again which is even more disappointing. This used to be a treat worthy of the expectation.

They were open on a Sunday, and as far as the crowd I was with was concerned, that was adequate enough reason to stumble in to eat.
I had been here before and tried as hard as I could to ignore the musty smell of the place then, but did not enjoy the food.
So, in we sauntered.
Well, though they were open on a Sunday, there were only four customers in the whole place — all four at the same table.
Worst of all, the smell remained. Fortunately, after a quick huddle, we decided to leave and avoid the slow service, mediocre food and uncomfortable environment.
What is the Chinese adage?
«Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.»
I won’t be fooled again!
Enjoy!

Horrible service and bad food. The bread course was good and also the salad. The waitress took 25 minutes to take our order. Food came in a timely manner after ordered. I had the brisket which looked and tasted like thin shaved charred bbq bacon. My husband had the scallops and one of them tasted of urine. This means the scallops have went bad. I would of rather had a Big Mac then this meal. $ 80 down the tubes for a crappy meal.

I tried this beautiful, intimate, gold plated place a final time? Went with a small fun group of five from church. We wanted to eat at Barr’s Public House around the corner but at 5 p.m. It was already an estimated 1.5 hour wait. So I was out voted to try Dégagé again. Due to my previous experience I just bought a large garden salad and it was small. The food was 10 star, priced 10 star and was Amuse Bouche sized as usual. To sum up, Veeeeeeeeeery expensive and petite portions. The service was impeccable! Exactly like Long Horn’s steak house but twice the price with half the portions. The place is gorgeous and the food is OUT OF THIS WORLD but the portions are for the Lilliput Folk. I would do very well in Buckhead Atlanta, Manhattan New York, on the lake in Chicago, Beverly Hills where beautiful the nouveau riche order tiny meals that compliment their eating disorders and their black Visas. It’s no wonder that the restaurant is FOR SALE.
No bread was served with our meal. I found this unusual.

Great concept but needs some attention. First, the menu is creative, thoughtful and well-​rounded to meet the jazz and southern theme. And the food itself is well crafted and presented and just plain tasty. I always want the food itself to be enough but there are too many other gaps that are just annoying enough to make me write this review. Although we didn’t have a reservation, the hostess was very «troubled» in seating us even though there were many open table for the duration of our visit. Our server was incredibly slow, taking the drink orders from two other tables before seeing us again after leaving us with the incomplete drink menu. The slowness continued: order, drinks, check. Finally, the laminated menu has lost the appeal of a locally grown and sourced selection, not to mention a very flat cocktail and craft beer menu. Please work on these off-​table issues and you will knock it out of the park.

A relative recommended this restaurant for a place using local ingredients. I’m not sure how I would tell if the ingredients were local. However the food was great! The staff was helpful and able to answer all our questions regarding the menu.
We started with the Shrooms and Cheese. This is a vegan appetizer. My wife and I cleaned the bowl. We even ate the edamame garnish! The garnish was a nice twist.
For an entrée I had the The Best D*&! Country Fried Steak Ever. It is listed as a house specialty. This country fried steak lived up to the description! It was awesome! It came with gravy, mashed potatoes, and perfect green beans.
My wife had the Tipsy Pear and Arugula salad and the Kutz’s Dueling Dumplings. She enjoyed the salad. There were two types of dumpling. A pumpkin potato dumpling and a potato dumplings with bourbon cocktail, lemon, pea chimichurri. We both prefered the pumpkin potato dumpling.
The meal was delicious. A great warm atmosphere for a cold winter night. I would recommend this for a special night out.

This was a repeat trip for us to this restaurant, and sorry to say the experience was disappointing. Our server was totally wonderful, and we enjoyed the ambiance, however we did have a few things we were less than thrilled with.
First, on our arrival, we waited at the front door for nearly 5 minutes before any hostess even helped us. We were the only ones there, so not sure of the issue. The restaurant was also quite cold. We said nothing, but heard other tables complaining. The response was — after the band starts playing, it will warm up quick. It never did.
The menu is confusing, and the food was just average. Table mates ordered beef, and came in a heaping plate, only to find just a little beef on the top, and the dish as mostly potatoes. Biggest issue was my wife hates onions, and ordered a dish that supposedly had no onions, put she spent most of the meal ;picking out the onions.
Finally, and the reason we will not return, is our dinner was about $ 100 for the 2 of us, and on the bill, we also saw we were charged a $ 6 «cover charge» which I can only assume is for the band. Considering the size of the bill, and value, it left a rather bad taste.

Website talks about farm to table but no mention of sourcing on the menu. Where does the meat come from? Does the source justify the menu price?
Food was just ok. Shrooms and cheese appetizer was a big fried oyster mushroom with cheese sauce glopped on it. Was difficult to share. Shrimp dinner had 5 – 6 different items in it but it was all combined in the same bowl so it just ran together like a plate at thanksgiving. Not sitting well right now. :(
Service was friendly but poorly trained and slow. Left a lot of dirty dishes on the table, didn’t know much about the menu, bleh.
Overall, meh. We’ll try it again after at least a year, probably two.

Good local spot, however the food is extremely heavy. Delicious. .but heavy. I also had asked for a vegetarian menu and the waiter informed me the chef does not make exceptions to the menu and will not change anything. I found this off putting and rather rude. It’s 2015, not everyone wants bacon fat in there food. Not to mention I thought I had seen a vegetarian menu when I came in but I must have been mistaken. On a upside, if you are not health conscious. this is a good spot to go. Flavor is definitely not lacking with this chef.

This is one of our favorite go-​to spots for a nice dinner out. The food is always great with lots of interesting options — and names. Tonight I had the Lambert’s Coq au vin, which was delicious served with «mashers» (mashed potatoes) and pearl onions. My husband had the Duck & «waffles.» The waffles were really small potato pancakes though not the kind of potato pancakes I’ve had before and tasty yellow carrots rounded out the plate. His was the winner between two very good meals. The beer cheddar chili was quite good too and i liked the apple lemon dressing served with the dinner salad.
We were seated in the dining room instead of the jazz café/​lounge on this visit. The seating was comfortable in this historic Maumee building. The lounge is a bit cozier & more intimate and is especially nice when there is live music to enjoy. We’ll definitely be back!

Once again, dégagé doesn’t disappoint. This is one of the most under appreciated restaurants in the Toledo area. It’s legitimately a gem. I have never had a bad experience or poorly made or presented food. Don’t think, just go.

I’ve been here twice, once for lunch and once for dinner. The food is excellent, and if you have the chance, I highly recommend enjoying a meal in the jazz café setting when live music is present.
If you go to Dégagé and have any taste at all for cheese, I cannot recommend the chef’s choice cheese platter enough. I ordered it both times, and both the presentation and assortment of flavors were exquisite. The cheeses, all of which are excellent, are served alongside an attractive assortment of crackers, toast, fresh fruit, preserves, and mustards, and trying different combinations was a delight.
When I came for lunch with my girlfriend we both tried sandwiches, and she found the thick cut bacon to be some of the best she had ever tasted. When I came for dinner, I had the chef’s signature duck and a pollack, which is essentially duck three ways: roasted, pickled, and in pierogis, and all three were delicious. In both cases, the food was attractively presented on wooden boards, and the musician in me appreciated a drizzle of sauce in the shape of an alto clef.
The rest of the menu, which I would say is more accurately described as New American than French, offered a number of other creative and tempting choices that I look forward to trying in the future. While the menu changes depending on what is available, I will say that when I went at least, the vegetarian and vegan options were somewhat limited. Of course, given the changing menu, you might have a different experience.
For my dinner visit I came with a friend and we were able to sit in Dégagé’s jazz café room and hear some live music. The space is intimate and romantically lit, and even a slightly rowdy table to our left didn’t detract from our ability to hear and enjoy the music. The musician, a Latin guitarist, was both skillful performer and charismatic and personable individual. He stopped by our table to chat between sets and amusingly dedicated a song to our (non)romantic relationship. And certainly I think should one be looking for romantic date ideas, and evening in the jazz café would fit the bill wonderfully.
Whether you want a leisurely and delicious meal to the tune of some live jazz or just want some quality food, Dégagé does not disappoint, and I’m looking forward to making it back.

Dégagé is adventure eating at its best. Fun atmosphere and a unique menu. Had Duck and a Polack. Which was awesome.

Holy smokes was that good! Everything on the menu sounded amazing. We went with the big ode (burger) and the scallops and puppies. Both were awesome! This is one of those places where you’ll want to try something new every time you come!

I came out with some friends on a Saturday night to have a few drinks and enjoy some live jazz.
The wait staff was fantastic and the drinks were good… and the live jazz was out of this world.
However, they have a woman with an attitude problems taking names that really, really needs to be addressed. She had a major attitude and made it seem like she was doing us a huge favor by taking our cover charge and seating us. And based on the feedback from my friends who had been to Dégagé Jazz Café before — it’s a moderately regular occurrence with her.

Service was very friendly and eager to help. We sat in the back part due to the live music being extremely loud for such a small place. Since we were first timers, we got capersio which had tons of flavor and really enjoyed the single bite. For appetizer we got spinach and artichoke dip which was also very good and creamy. Second course was soup, onion soup for me and creamy cheddar bacon clam chowder: both were excellent and almost the best we’ve ever had. Then came the entrees… very disappointed with both meals. We got the full rack of ribs and the walleye. I could hardly rip off the meat from the bone on one half of the ribs and the other half had so much fat here wasn’t any meat to fill you up-​came with unseasoned mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. Walleye itself was good, but everything attached to it was bland and blah.
When we got the bill we had a $ 4.75 upcharge of soup since I got a «crock» instead of a cup. Soup would have been free if I got a cup (crock price was $ 0.75 difference from a cup!!!) Shady that they didn’t explain that to me when I ordered it! Came there hungry and left hungry.

Was really looking forward to trying out some of the vegetarian and vegan items I had read about… but super bummed when they menu changed the day after we made a reservation. The vegan hot mess is no longer on the menu and we were told they could not make it. Even our backup order, the onion jam pizza, while although still listed on the menu, was also not available. Also brought out two amuse bouches of scallops even though I put in the comment section of our reservation that we were both vegetarian/​vegan.
We finally settled on the «chik’n and grits» and the «beets & gnocchi» and things got better from there… perfect portion size and tasty.
Hoping for a return to the spring/​summer version of the menu to give it another shot!

I went to Dégagé a little over a year ago and was very disappointed. The service was lousy and the quartet they had playing was fairly mediocre. Each member wanted to do their own thing, which ended up sounding like cacophony in my opinion.
On this visit to Dégagé, I was very impressed! Nick and Summer, our servers, were very attentive and friendly. Even though the kitchen was officially closed they offered us a delicious, locally sourced cheese plate to have with our drinks. It was outstanding!
The new manager of Dégagé, Jordan, has really done a fantastic job of turning this establishment around! The staff is so much more friendly and cohesive compared to last time I was there.
Cynthia Kaay Bennett and her band were performing when we visited. Not only is she and her band all very talented artists, they were very interactive with the Dégagé patrons, performing requests and generally just giving off a really good vibe.
With the music scene being so limited in Toledo, it’s nice to know places like Dégagé are still around so jazz aficionados can still get their fix!