Review: Josephine, Chelsea

There’s a type of restaurant. It takes a classic local cuisine, recreates it in a bijou corner of London in a comfortable dining room that looks like the chocolate-box version of the old local restaurants where the cuisine originated, perfects the classic dishes, then doubles the pricetag and tops it with a winelist hefty with mark-up. I know it’s a type, because I’ve been to four or five of them over the years, and Josephine is certainly one.

But in case you got the impression that I think it’s a bad thing, it’s really not. You can’t just pop to Lyons if you fancy experiencing a classic Lyonnaise Bouchon, but you can pop to Chelsea and try one that (I’m willing to bet) is as good or better than some of the originals. Price aside, of course.

Josephine is properly packed, everyone sitting at simple, round, linen-draped tables, squished in enough that the ample waiters sometimes give you a bump and an “excusez moi” as they try to shimmy past with plates for another table. It’s nice, and friendly, and the wine list is full of France, albeit with only a few to choose from in the two-digit category.

Of course there was nice, crusty bread on the table. I needed it to soak up the spare cream sauce from around my cheese souffle starter. Wonderfully light souffle, good tang of strong cheese, wicked cream sauce. Plenty of room for my main course of andouillette! I’ve got a bad addiction to tripe sausage and tend to order it any chance I get. This was a good specimen, full flavoured without going over, nicely peppery and unctuous texture. Served with a simple mustard sauce and very silky mash potato. Maureen’s veal sweetbread was a sturdy piece, well char-grilled on the outside and very creamy within. The morel sauce it was bathed in was another monster of cream, but packed with the earthily perfumed morel flavour it went perfectly with the offal. Naturally, no-one really wants their meal to just be a sweetbread doused in cream sauce, so we’d ordered sides: dauphinoise potatoes, rustic and pungently garlicky, and green beans dressed with fried shallots.

We squeezed in pudding too. My lemon meringue tart was a lovely specimen, properly tangy custard and crisp pastry, while Maureen had a light and lovely nougat parfait in a pool of raspberry sauce. You might land at around £60 each for three courses before drinks, which is obviously kinda toppy for French bistro classics. These are done very well, though, is all I can say.