It’s hard to know what a “bistro” is these days. Once, it meant steak frites and a glass of house red, brisk service and chairs that made your back hurt. Now, in Marylebone – where the word is flung about like Maldon salt – it might mean devilled ox tongue and a £130 T-bone, or lobster rice served by someone in linen. You still get the classics: the white tablecloths, the chalked-up mirrors, the soft sort of generosity. But increasingly, you also get foie gras budgets and Michelin stars. The spirit remains. The rules? Less so.
Which makes it ripe for Fine and Dime – our monthly column comparing two restaurants circling the same theme, but at very different price points. One is the high-end splurge, the other the low-key fallback. One for payday, one for a Tuesday. The idea isn’t to pit them against each other, but to ask: what makes a place worth it, whatever you’re spending?
This month, I stayed local – two bistros, both in Marylebone, both new(ish), both very hyped. Lazy? Maybe. But if you lived here and had these on your doorstep, you wouldn’t be straying far either.
First up is Josephine Bistro, Claude Bosi’s follow-up to his wildly popular Josephine Bouchon in Fulham. It’s all soufflés and French onion soup, white tablecloths, waistcoated waiters and that rarest of things in central London: a set menu for under £30. A proper neighbourhood spot – assuming your neighbours wear Toteme and book tables three weeks in advance.
Then there’s Lita – from Luke Ahearne, ex-Corrigan’s, ex-Clove Club, ex-Luca – already Michelin-starred in under a year. It bills itself as a bistro, but you won’t find plats du jour or scribbled menus here. This is Mediterranean-inflected fine dining with swagger: a playlist of pure bangers, stuffed morels, anchovies that arrive like jewellery. It’s bistro-adjacent in spirit, not execution.
We picked these two because they share a postcode and a self-description, but couldn’t feel more different. One leans nostalgic, the other modern. One offers snails and a glass of Muscadet; the other, smoked monkfish and serious Burgundy. And yet both speak to the kind of food my fiancé and I love most – French, Mediterranean, comforting, faintly excessive. It’s how we cook at home. On a recent holiday, a friend tucked into our duck confit and said, dreamily, “I wish I ate like this all the time.” We smiled. “We do.” Or at least, we try.
Which is really what this column is about: the kind of food you fantasise about making but are just as happy to find on a menu. So, which bistro gets it right? Turns out: both. Just not in the same way.
Josephine Bistro: French comfort, classic charm – and a masterclass in nostalgia
Claude Bosi reminds us why French food became a cliché in the first place — because it’s really, really good — and proves that a £24.50 set menu can still feel like a luxury.
There are two types of people who go to Josephine. There are the ones who want steak tartare and a martini and to pretend they’re in a scene from Call My Agent!, and there are the ones who come for the plat du jour, a carafe of wine and to be out in under an hour. The brilliance of Claude Bosi’s new Marylebone bistro is that both are welcome. You can blow the budget or keep it casual. Settle in or dash off. And whichever you choose, you’ll probably leave smiling, smelling faintly of Camembert and wondering if you can sneak in another visit next week.
I’d originally planned to try the set menu – £24.50 for two courses, £29.50 for three, or £16.50 for a plat du jour at lunch – a format that helped make the Fulham Bouchon such an Instagram darling. But the stars of that menu – the parsley-flecked ham hock terrine, the oozy, unapologetic andouillette – were missing. In their place: herrings and potato in olive oil, devilled ox tongue, white pudding in white sauce. All textbook bistro, but decidedly less sexy. A set menu should feel both recognisable and quietly iconic. A good one doesn’t need to chase clout – but it should make sense without a glossary.
Josephine Bistro
Good to know
Chef: Claude Bosi (also behind Josephine Bouchon, Brooklands at the Peninsula, Bibendum)
Set lunch: 2 courses £24.50, 3 courses £29.50
Plat du jour: £16.50 – Monday-Friday, changes daily
Wine: By the glass from £9, bottle from £28
Atmosphere: White tablecloths, waistcoats, a dash of nostalgia
Vibe: Café Rouge with a Michelin dad and better bread
Walk-ins: Possible, but safer to book
Go-to order: Onion soup, soufflé, a carafe of red and maybe a Pernod
What we ordered instead became a sort of exercise in how to eat economically at a place that could easily empty your wallet if you let it. It started with restraint and good intentions… and ended with a bottle of £85 chenin blanc (though if you’ve got more self-control, a perfectly good glass of Muscadet will set you back just £9, or £28 for a bottle of the house wine).
The pâté de campagne is a fine place to start: ruddy, rich, served with warm bread, mustard and a tangle of gherkins. I could live off this. In fact, I often do. It’s our go-to dinner when we “can’t be bothered” – a phrase that really means we’ve reached the limits of our willingness to cook, but not to eat well. At £17.50 it’s not exactly frugal, but split between two with a glass of wine, it may well be the cheapest way to eat at Josephine – and one of the most satisfying. A sort of luxury picnic, indoors.
Critics rarely order steak tartare – there’s rarely much to say. It’s either good or it isn’t. A little cliché, maybe – but then clichés are just classics someone’s embarrassed to love. This one is good: coarse-cut, properly chilled, green-flecked and available in two sensible sizes – £11 for a starter or £19.50 if you want to commit. The real headline, though, is the toast – what can only be described as bistro-ified garlic bread in its final evolution: golden, butter-soaked and so intensely garlicky I smelled it before I saw it. A triumph for me – I consider garlicky breath a sign of a night well spent – but it slightly overpowers the tartare. Not one for first dates, unless you’re planning on swerving a snog at the end of the night.
French onion soup in a pot so hot the cheesy lid had welded to the rim, resisting the spoon with the threat of third-degree burns. Approach with caution, and then relish. Speaking of, underneath, a broth so thick it verged on chutney, rich with booze and a noticeable lean toward the sweet. When does a soup stop being soup? When you’re tempted to spread it on toast, I suppose.
Camembert soufflé followed – the bistro’s Instagram heartthrob – quivering in its dish, impossibly light, bobbing gently in a tide of cheesy sauce. It didn’t collapse so much as sigh – like easing off your shoes at the end of the day. And then: the caillettes de porc – spinach and pork faggots in a glossy Marengo sauce. Rich, dense, hearty. Very brown. The sort of dish that might be described by the menu as “generous” and by your belt as “enough, thanks”.
The bistro vibe here isn’t a branding exercise – it’s baked in. The chalked-up mirrors, the white tablecloths, the red-rimmed plates, the waistcoated staff and scribbled specials could be a cliche – but they’re not. If you’d dropped me here blindfolded (and, crucially, French), I’d assume I was in Paris.
It reminded me of Café Rouge – not the punchline it’s since become, but the place I first fell in love with French food. We’d go pre-cinema, order something creamy or mustardy and feel very grown-up. It was a sort of fantasy – steak frites, moules, French onion soup, pâté, Camembert, boeuf bourguignon. The thing is, Josephine does all that too – just better. It feels like a bistro not because it’s trying to be, but because it knows how.
Which is maybe why it feels like the beginning of something. Not a concept, not a brand, but a proper little empire in the making. How many restaurants do you need before you’re considered a chain? Is it like being a serial killer – three and you’re in? With Josephine Bouchon in Fulham and now Josephine Bistro in Marylebone, Bosi’s only one away from a spree. If they’re all like this, I say let him get away with it.
Josephine Bistro, 26 Paddington Street, London W1U 5QY
Open: daily for dinner, 5-10pm; lunch Monday to Friday, 12-2.30pm, Saturday and Sunday, 12-3pm; breakfast Friday to Sunday, 8am-11am
Price: Plat du jour, Monday to Friday, £16.50; set menu, £24.50 for two courses, £29.50 for three; à la carte, approximately £40-£60pp, house wine £28/£9 a glass
Booking recommended, walk-ins welcome
josephinebistro.com | enquiries@josephinebistro.com
Lita: Michelin-starred dining that breaks the rules – and earns the bill
Luke Ahearne’s Mediterranean ‘bistro’ delivers one of the most exciting menus in town – all slick service, serious skill and lobster rice worth losing sleep over.
If Josephine is a bistro through and through, then Lita is a bistro in theory. The website says so, at least. But the second you walk in – no tablecloths, no mirrored specials, no waiters in waistcoats – it’s clear we’re operating on a looser definition. Which is fine. The word means different things to different people. In the Mediterranean, where Lita draws its inspiration, it’s less steak frites and more stuffed morels and wild garlic. Still, the effect is more luxe neighbourhood spot than classic corner bistro. Think Marylebone with Shoreditch energy and Michelin precision. There’s certainly no mistaking it for Café Rouge.
Lita
Good to know
Chef: Luke Ahearne (ex-Corrigan’s, Clove Club, Luca)
Style: Mediterranean-ish “bistro” with Michelin ambitions
Michelin star: One – within a year of opening
Standouts: Duck ragu strozzapreti, lobster rice, monkfish bouillabaisse
Wine: By the glass from £9, bottle from £28 to £1,080
Seating: Banquettes, counter seats, and just enough elbow room
Bookings: Essential – plan ahead
Service: Impeccable, but never stiff – you’re in good hands
This is Luke Ahearne’s first solo project, and within a year of opening, it picked up a Michelin star. It’s an impressive achievement, and the food reflects it. This is not a restaurant coasting on hype. It’s technical and confident and, in parts, properly thrilling. But it’s also expensive. Starters edge towards £30; mains can top £60. We didn’t try the £130 T-bone, though we did admire it at a neighbouring table, paraded like a trophy kill. There’s no official pairing, but the sommelier is happy to guide you through a glass-by-glass journey if you ask nicely. Prices range from a £9 Corbières to some serious Burgundy and Bordeaux heavy-hitters, so you can go as safe or as splashy as you like.
Still, I can’t remember the last time I ate a meal at this price point that felt so worth it. Sometimes, Michelin rewards formula: a safe set of boxes ticked by the right cuts of fish and birds. At Lita, you get none of that. The food feels genuinely original – inventive without being attention-seeking, luxurious without being heavy. Which is perhaps more remarkable given that Ahearne is entirely self-taught, though that feels like a lazy footnote now. This is cooking by someone who knows the rules and is having a brilliant time breaking them.
It begins with pan con tomate and Cantabrian anchovies – a quietly perfect bite. The bread is crisp, the tomatoes sharp, the anchovy draped like jewellery. At £17 for two pieces, it sets the tone. This is not a restaurant for nibbling. The tuna tartare arrives sculptural and sharply dressed, with corno peppers and pickled coriander seeds. It’s the kind of dish you could eat a whole mixing bowl of and still not be bored. Every flavour – salt, acid, smoke, sweetness – hits a different part of the mouth. It’s like ceviche and ratatouille had a baby.
The strozzapreti with Aylesbury duck ragu is a revelation: nubbly, chewy pasta twisted through a sauce that clings like velvet. It’s dark and deep and almost wintry, with just enough Parmesan snow to cut through the richness. I’d go back for this alone. The stuffed morels – fast becoming a signature – arrive bobbing in a tide of silky foam, wild garlic waving like seaweed. There’s white asparagus, perfectly tender, and lardo di Colonnata draped like a fur stole over the top. It’s a dish that could easily have tipped into overkill, but it doesn’t. It lands like a symphony: rich, green, fragrant, fungal.
The monkfish is a show of confidence – a hefty fillet with a crisp sear and soft centre, sat in a bouillabaisse so buttery and golden it tastes like Marseille in August, with a whisper of curry that keeps it interesting. Heritage carrots glazed with ras el hanout tip the dish toward sweetness again – it’s almost pudding-adjacent – but somehow the fish holds it together. If Josephine is all about the classics, Lita is a reminder that rules are just suggestions.
And then the lobster rice. The smell alone is enough to make you forget the £82 price tag. It’s deep and brooding, smoky from the cuttlefish, with frills of saffron aioli melting at the corners. Every grain is saturated with flavour. This is rice that’s been respected. I kept scooping out spoonfuls long after I was full. It’s not subtle – it’s a showstopper – but it earns it. A dish you talk about the next day, and the day after.
This is the fundamental difference between Lita and Josephine. At Josephine, you can snack on pâté and be out the door for under £25. At Lita, that wouldn’t get you through the bread course. One isn’t better than the other – they’re just built differently. Josephine is a restaurant you can drop into once a week; Lita is more of an occasion, albeit one that doesn’t feel like a chore. It’s stylish but relaxed, starry without being stuffy. The team – led by general manager Glen and sommelier Kristina – are charming and dialled in, never hovering, never condescending. That alone sets it apart from so many “fine dining” places where you feel like you’re being watched for infractions. Here, you’re just well looked after.
Lita doesn’t feel like a bistro – but it doesn’t have to. It’s smart enough to know that being labelled something isn’t the same as embodying it. Where Josephine leans into nostalgia, Lita looks forward. They’re two different answers to the same question: how can a restaurant make people happy? And in their own ways, both are correct.
Lita Marylebone, 7-9 Paddington St, London W1U 5QH
Open: Monday to Saturday, 12-2.30pm, 6-11pm; Sunday, 12-2.30pm, 6-10.30pm
Price: £100-£150, wine ranges from £9 to £30 per glass, £28 to £1,080 per bottle
Booking essential
litamarylebone.com | reservations@litamarylebone.com | 020 8191 2928
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