Latest news with #Joséphine
Telegraph
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
‘This is what food should be in 2025': William Sitwell reviews Josephine Marylebone, London
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.'
The Guardian
06-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Museum turns up the dial on pioneering art collector Joséphine Bowes
'We would not be stood here if it were not for Joséphine Bowes,' said Vicky Sturrs, a curator, in a stupendously grand building that has one of the most enviable collections of art, ceramics and fashion to be found outside the UK's capital cities. 'I wouldn't be employed in this job, this museum would not exist.' The Bowes Museum has of course always known that the Frenchwoman Joséphine Bowes was an important part of its story, but the spotlight has more often been on her English landowner husband, John Bowes. 'Joséphine had a bigger role than we've ever made visible,' Sturrs said. 'In the coming years we are going to turn up the dial on who Joséphine was, why she built the museum, why she chose the things that she chose, why she collected what she collected and why she did it here.' A new exhibition celebrates Joséphine at the museum in the Durham Dales that she created in the 19th century with John. It contains examples of her own paintings, works that she collected, and also radical and joyous works that curators think she would be collecting if alive today. Joséphine, born 200 years ago, was an actor and performer at Paris's Théâtre des Variétés when she met John. They fell in love and married and she became a pioneering collector and patron of the arts. She collected 15,000 objects of astonishing variety, from art by Boudin and Courbet to the finest ceramics, glassware, textiles, furniture and mechanical objects. At the time, the Bowes bought more early impressionist works than the National Gallery. Joséphine collected what she loved and hoped people would enjoy, but she was also open to advice. 'She did collect things she didn't like,' Sturrs said. 'She was told by her dealers that 'a collection of this calibre' should really have a Goya. She didn't like Goya.' It meant the Bowes Museum now has in its collection what has been described as 'easily the greatest Goya portrait' in the UK. Joséphine was the driving force in creating the undeniably grand museum in Barnard Castle. The museum's executive director, Hannah Fox, said visitors often assumed the building was once a stately home. It wasn't. It was built as a museum 'for the people' and opened in 1892, after the deaths of Joséphine and John. The exhibition aims to celebrate the 'vision and the spirit' of Joséphine and includes work that curators think she would have been collecting today. All the evidence suggests Joséphine was generous and open minded. 'She was much more accepting of all sorts of different people and their lifestyle than Victorian society was,' Sturrs said. 'The works in the show feel authentic to the person we think Joséphine was … she would be championing these works. This is Joséphine in 2025.' Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion The works include a pot by Grayson Perry and sculptures by Leilah Babirye, who fled her home in Uganda after being outed as gay. There are also four original photographs from a series by the Turner prize-winning artist Gillian Wearing for which she stopped people in the street and asked them to write down what they were really thinking. 'I'm desperate,' says a smart-suited young man; 'I'm depressed at the moment,' writes a person who is unsettlingly smiley. The show includes a new commission from the artist Phoebe Cummings and ceramics by Lucy Waters, a winner of the north-east emerging artist award. Sturrs, the museum's director of programmes and collections, said the name of Joséphine Bowes needed to be shouted louder. 'There is this assumption in history that a man must have been behind this, that a man must have been leading this. To be clear, this is not about erasing John. But it is about saying that Joséphine had an equal and at times more leading part.' From Joséphine Bowes: Trendsetters and Trailblazers is at the Bowes Museum, 8 February to 29 June.
