Restaurant review: Josephine, London W1

Is this for real?

At the end of 2022, with inflation at 10.7 per cent, the economy shrinking and the hospitality industry on its knees, London’s diners decided that they wanted foie gras and filet au poivres and Mont Blancs. French bistros were back, and at the unlikeliest time.

I welcomed the bistro boom when it started. Here were places where you could pretend everything was alright with the world. My favourite London restaurant has become the best example of the breed, Bouchon Racine. Here, more than anywhere else in the city, is perfect service, a perfect room and perfect cooking all in one.

Others followed. Some are brilliant, like Camille in Borough Market, which respects French technique and dishes while nudging them forwards (octopus au poivre, wild boar schnitzels). Yet others, like ‘Bistro Freddie’ in Shoreditch, very clearly look like a gimmick-y jump on the bistro train. I’m looking at Bistro Freddie’s menu now: an egg mayonnaise and an anchovy (£8.50, mandatory dish covered), a grilled pork skewer and ‘BF sauce’ (what? £7.50), chicken caesar salad, flatbreads, sticky toffee pudding. This is the menu of nowhere and of no one, of no common place or cooking style, the menu of a money-maker, not a chef.

Dare I question whether Claude Bosi’s new bistros are cynical? He’s a total darling of the restaurant industry, a brilliant chef and scary too. He’s imposing and has called people ‘cunts’ on Twitter before. He has four Michelin stars and he got them very quickly. In March last year, he opened his own ‘bouchon’ called Josephine on the Fulham Road, and now there’s a second branch in Marylebone.

Credit: Sam Harris

In Chelsea, the room feels clinical, not as homely, or slightly shaggy, as a bouchon should be. In Marylebone, no complaints: this is a room AJ Liebling would have seen fit to slowly kill himself in. In Chelsea, the menu is Lyonnaise, because Claude is from there. Marylebone is modelled after the grand Parisian brasseries, and it felt quite a lot like Bouillon Julien.

I had lunch at the Marylebone restaurant this week, seven days after opening. I had a suspicion that this branch might feel like a sop. Because of Bosi’s own Lyonnaise upbringing, there is something about the Chelsea branch of Josephine where you can feel Bosi’s soul, from the refusal to make a vegetarian version of the French onion soup, to the frogs’ legs on the menu, to the inclusion of the heart, liver and kidney in the lapin à la moutarde, to the terrifying andouillette on the set menu. The Marylebone branch, as befits the location on Blandford Street and the Paris inspiration, appeals slightly more to ostentatious wealth: it offers up a Josephine Plateau de Fruits de Mer (£120), with which you can ‘Add Whole Lobster (£72)’. When I saw a banana split on the menu, I feared the worst.

But I needn’t have worried. Josephine Marylebone is a really good restaurant. Yes, you can have said lobster and sit out on the terrace and rack up quite a bill. You can, like the people around us were doing, come here for a £44 sole meunière. But the set menu — £24.50 for two courses, £29.50 for three courses — is brilliantly democratic. It reminds me of the catch of the old Corbin and King restaurants, like Brasserie Zedel or The Wolseley: yes, you could go there for lobster and caviar, or you could go there for a steak haché for £12.

While you look at the menu, they bring croutons with some whipped cod’s roe and some outstanding baguette and butter. This seems too generous to be true, and it is: you will find a £2.50 cover charge per person when your bill arrives.

The classic Parisian dish of hareng pommes a l’huile was hardly messed with. The smoked herring was thick, and the sliced potatoes were the perfect level of firmness. The vinaigrette it came with knew it wasn’t meant to be the star. Our other starter, leeks vinaigrette, had a slightly more ticklish bass note of mustard, and were cooked until surprisingly soft and stringy.

Then came the mains: first, a fillet of trout, which my friend Max said was overcooked but I found just right. Personally, I’ll take firmer flesh on a trout or salmon to make sure that the skin really is blistered and crispy, but Max is a chef and so has higher opinions on the way things should be done. The beurre rouge which the trout came with was proof that both Josephines are, ultimately, the best sauce restaurants in town. The beurre rouge was undeniably blood-like, had clearly been helped by an excellent bottle of red, and was thickened by a monté: the French technique of stirring cold butter into a sauce at the end to thicken it. It’s a sort of One Quick Trick to make sauces taste better, and the Italians would do well to admit that.

Second, a boudin blanc: a white pudding, pleasingly bland on the spice and herb front, but with wonderful, snappy texture, served with mashed potatoes where the butter to potato ratio might even have been 70:30, and an extremely delicate sauce blanquette.

The dessert we shared was a crème caramel, and after you’ve had the one at Bouchon Racine, they all taste a bit rubbish in comparison. This one was a standard version — flatter, and lighter in colour — but was annoyingly light on the vanilla bean, and the caramel could have been more bitter.

I think the French bistro revival is coming to an end. Already, I can see a return in the trend cycle to Italy, as Canteen seduces Notting Hill, and more people become aware of Polentina in Bow, and international students bankrupt themselves at Marylebone’s Nina. In about three years’ time, I’m sure it will be Spain’s turn, and we will all wonder why we went off tapas in the first place. But stay there, Josephine, I’ll be back in a few years.