‘This is what food should be in 2025': William Sitwell reviews Josephine Marylebone, London

Telegraph

26-06-2025

I feel I've been willing Claude Bosi on to this moment. The French chef was born in Lyon (a town so culinarily accomplished that it lends its name to a salad and is famous for dishes such as coq au vin, andouillette, quenelle and tête de veau). Then over he popped to England and, in the ensuing decades, has dished up food from Ludlow to London, collected Michelin stars and purveyed a type of cuisine that marries complex gastronomic technique with classic French ingredients.
Hence dishes at Hibiscus (which opened in Shropshire then moved to the capital, now sadly closed) such as chicken with onion fondue and licorice, or mackerel tartare with strawberries and celery. Fabulous, for sure, but I've been itching for him to do something properly, traditionally, unequivocally French.
This he began to do when he took over Bibendum in South Kensington, although he couldn't help but segue into stuff like peas with coconut, chocolate and mint. And then there was one of his other places, Brooklands, where a complex dinner for two costs around half a grand…
But last year he must have felt it was time to behave like a proper Frenchman. So he opened Joséphine in Chelsea. And, lord, was it (and still is) good. A French bistro, awning at the entrance, tablecloths and rabbit and veal.
Now, ever generous, Bosi is spreading the love and has opened a branch of Joséphine in Marylebone. And while it's not quite as gloriously decorated as the mothership it's a grand job; no doubt, eyeing up a nest egg alongside his stable of independent restaurants, he'll fling out some more then flog them to a Qatari.
You must hope he does a Joséphine near you. Then you can dine, as we did, gloriously guided by great waiting staff, on fish soup served at the table from a large china tureen with its jolly chums, the croutons, rouille and shaved Gruyère. As decent a fish soup as you'd get at Henry Harris's Racine and with baguettes that are miraculously as fine as fresh ones in Paris, sounding as good to break as they are to taste.
We ate half a dozen snails, for which I yearned a bigger punch of garlic, before sharing a shoulder of lamb which did deliver garlic along with flageolet beans – such perfect bedfellows they seem both as natural and wondrous as the juxtaposition of sun and earth. The lamb glistened, dark skin charred from the oven, with pink flesh falling off the bones. It was a clarion call: put down your tweezers, chefs, this is what food is, or should be, in 2025. We had some greenery of steamed spinach. And then, turning the dial up to 11, shared a chocolate mousse which was rich and fluffy and fun.
Every mouthful of lunch at Joséphine confirmed my long-held disparagement of tasting menus. And that's before the fun of the wine offer: the classic system of 'au metre'. They bring out the house white and red and, at the end, get a ruler and figure out the bill. Sure, it's more economical to buy by the bottle, but this feels more adventurous, and more French.
With Joséphine 2, Claude Bosi (in partnership with his wife Lucy), stands at the pinnacle of his career, serving food that's posh, fancy and bank-plundering in one direction, and in the other, hearty, gorgeous, life-enhancing, un-bastardised, fully-fledged, bold and authentic. Order carefully, do a little sharing, don't go mad on the wine and you'll find great value, too. As Napoleon Bonaparte pointedly did not say, 'Tonight, Joséphine.'