If you are of a certain age — and this is a newspaper, so you are — then you may well remember the Dôme café bar in Hampstead. Or perhaps the one on the Kings Road in Chelsea. Those were the first two and they remained the flagships. But there was Chiswick and Islington and Oxford and Cambridge, and I think one on St Christopher’s Place in the West End, and a fair few more dotted around the country. Dozens, probably. But the one I worked in for two long, hot, student summers in the early 1990s was Hampstead.
We wore black trousers (or skirts), white shirts, black ties and aprons, and we didn’t have a clue. We were picked for our cuteness, that was all, and paid £2/hour plus tips. We were in it for the free (well, stolen) booze, the flirty fag breaks and hook-ups, and being the centre of a localised social whirl, the focal point of a young Hampstead scene back when it was still a fun place to be, drooled over by the local schoolgirls and boys because of our uniforms and our haircuts and the access we could provide to illicit things. It was as close as most of us would ever get to any sort of celebrity. Apart from the guy who went on to become Dennis Pennis. I forget his actual name.
There was a chrome bar, brass rails and smoked glass, antique gold walls, potted palms, bentwood chairs, slowly turning metal ceiling fans, newspapers on sticks, striped awnings, citron pressé, croque monsieur, cassoulet and a red “Tabac” sign outside that upset me deeply because we didn’t sell cigarettes, which made the sign a lie.
Joséphine Bistro: “Real, honest and properly run, staffed by professionals”
But, of course, it was all a lie. The croques, the cassoulet, even the omelettes aux fines herbes, came in frozen, to be microwaved in the tiny kitchen by a face-pierced Russian punk in a leather cap whom we called “the Captain” after Captain Sensible. The frisée for the salade Lyonnaise was the first I ever saw to come in a plastic bag, the dressing came in a jar, the soupe à l’oignon arrived twice a week, already in the bowl, under its industrial crouton.
It was the beginning of the modern chain restaurant (burger and pizza joints aside), and it terrified the hell out of me. We had been famous, in Hampstead, for our central “horseshoe” bar, and conducting the room like an orchestra from behind it was as much fun as I have ever had at work, but they closed for a month one winter to rip it out and put a straight bar down one side, and to swap the kitchens and loo round, and to change all the pictures and take the cassoulet off, because, said my manager, “A customer should be able to go into any Dôme, anywhere in the country, and know exactly what is on the menu and what is on the walls and where the gents is.”
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The chain mentality in a nutshell. The very death of restauration. This was around the time that ownership of Dôme passed from Trusthouse Forte to Grand Metropolitan, or possibly vice versa. It became a Café Rouge a few years later, which was arguably even worse, and now it’s an Ole & Steen, and no more a restaurant or local hub than your average motorway Starbucks. I kind of miss it, but only because I miss my youth and the innocent, screenless, book-filled, hopeful, sunny, green-leafed world I lived in then. As a restaurant, of course, it was quite, quite terrible.
But I’ll tell you an ersatz French London restaurant that isn’t at all terrible: Joséphine Bistro in Marylebone. In fact, it is quite wonderful. It is all the things the Dôme wasn’t: real, honest and properly run, staffed by professionals and based upon cooking that is fundamentally correcte.
“My white asparagus with sauce mousseline had a softness and subtlety that is the stuff of elderly, dentured dreams”
“The steak tartare was seasoned to an almost cheeseburgery perfection”
My white asparagus with sauce mousseline was of a softness and subtlety that is the stuff of elderly, dentured dreams; the steak tartare was seasoned to an almost cheeseburgery perfection (thanks to the dill in the pickles) and served with a big (freshly) fried crouton, rubbed with garlic and lemon and parsley; and the Dorset escargots à l’ail were bouncy and sweet, hot as hell, and green as the Green Goblin himself.
The look was perfect. This huge space used to be a Daylesford Organic and has been flipped entirely the other way, from a bright, airy, backdrop for weeny, boutique not quite foodstuffs aimed at calorie-dodging supermums, to a penumbrous, tile-floored, mirror-walled, lamplit, linen-clothed, bustling, chatty, sexy spot for serious hommes de trenche (that’s “trenchermen” to you).
There was genuine hustle that night, soon after opening, sweat on the waiters’ brows, a sommelier d’un certain âge literally sprinting from bottle to bottle, Esther and her sister Florence whooping it up loudly on what happened to be my wife’s birthday, and at one point, of course, owner Claude Bosi himself, like a Gaulish chef drawn by Albert Uderzo, taking time out from his other operations to do the rounds.
There were caillettes de porcs (which is French for “faggots” — no sniggering at the back!) which were deep and soulful; the best gratin dauphinois in England, familiar to me from Joséphine Bouchon in Chelsea (of which more in a moment); sensational, creamy sauced poulet des landes aux morilles with good, fluffy frites and haricots verts with salty butter and chopped shallot; and then a picturesque fraisier crème diplomate (strawberry cake, pal, strawberry cake); a restrained and classical crème caramel; and finally a surprise banana split, the cut fruit surface caramelised and crunchy, with a chocolate “Happy birthday” sign on top, delivered by a wait staff in full song, along with half the restaurant.
“The Dorset escargots à l’ail were bouncy and sweet”
A “picturesque” fraisier crème diplomate — that’s strawberry cake to you
So, yeah, this is everything that the Dôme was not: great cooking, serious staff, top-class looks and real personality. Which is why it is going to be such a terrific chain, possibly the best we have ever had. And it is going to be a chain, so don’t bother saying it’s not. I would even go so far as to say that it already is one, if a chain can have only two links, and I don’t see why it can’t.
“But the one in Chelsea isn’t called Joséphine Bistro,” I hear you protest. “It is called Joséphine Bouchon.”
To which I say, “Was, my friend. Was called ‘Joséphine Bouchon’. But it isn’t any more”. Because I googled it just now, the old one, the one that used to be “Bouchon”, which I reviewed this time last year, to see how different the menu was from the new Josephine, and it wasn’t there.
When you type “Joséphine Bouchon” into a search engine now, it redirects you automatically to “Joséphine Bistro” (or rather, josephinebistro.com), where you are told all about the two “Joséphines” in Chelsea and Marylebone, with no mention of “Bouchon” at all. The handle is still “josephinebouchon” on Instagram, but that’s because it has 57,000 followers; the bio beneath it now says “Joséphine Bistro”.
The crème caramel was “restrained and classical”
Banana split, “the cut fruit surface caramelised and crunchy”
Which can only mean that as the chain grows, the business needs them all to be called the same thing. And “bouchon” is just too tricky. Doesn’t tell the story transparently enough on the high street. And after all that trouble the critics went to, looking up “bouchon” on Wikipedia and then telling you it was a “casual Lyonnais brasserie traditionally favoured by the silk workers there”, as if they’d known it all along.
And I think it’s marvellous news. The more of these precious pearls that can be strung together across Britain the better. God, how they could use a couple up north. And out west. And down south. And right here.
The differences between the two menus are small, by the way. The new bistro is a little more Parisian than the former bouchon. But that manifests mainly as gentle variations to some of the dishes. The soufflé is of camembert, not Saint-Félicien; my white asparagus would have had a vinaigrette in Chelsea, instead of the mousseline; the chicken with morels here replace the (delicious) ris de veau done a similar way over there; the rabbit here is “Parisienne” as opposed to à la moutarde…
Whatever. Just keep ’em coming Claude. Have you thought about Kentish Town? Or what about Hampstead? There is an Ole & Steen that isn’t going to last. And I tell you what, if you can do better than £2/hour, there’s an old barman I know who might even come out of retirement for that one…
Joséphine Bistro
6-8 Blandford Street, London W1 (josephinebistro.com)
Cooking 8
Service 8
Rollability 9
Score 8.33
Price There is a three-course set menu available for £29.50, which is OUTRAGEOUS value for central London in 2025.