15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Evening Standard
Josephine, Marylebone: Ready-made chain feels like a cynical cash grab
Evidence of said brilliance can be found at the original Josephine, in Chelsea, which casts a long and very splendid shadow. It is a poignant eulogy from Bosi to his grandmother, a remembrance of her and his childhood formed as a Lyonnaise bouchon (or it was; the 'bouchon' description recently has been abandoned). Heart is not in short supply. It is a handsome room of oxblood banquettes, wood-panelled everything and lamps with cloth covers. Wine is charged by the centimetre — a man comes with a ruler and a calculator. The food? It's perfect: rabbit à la moutarde, duck à l'orange served without irony, a full stop slice of sausage punctuating a slash of brioche and soaked in red wine sauce. Veal sweetbreads, andouillette. A set menu offers two courses for £24.50 — on the Fulham Road. Were there full-size furniture in the place — Claude and his wife Lucy instead opting to source theirs from a Sylvanian Families extension pack — it might be flawless. But tiny, squished-in tables haven't stopped it packing out: every night it heaves with gleeful diners getting drunk off pork fat. One person I know has been 14 times.
