Josie, a little disappointing...
Went to Josie on Monday, hadn't been for a while and with the free corkage figured it would be a good chance to get reacquainted. While the service is still top notch, the room still lovely and the quiche amuse still tasty and making one want to eat a whole one at one sitting, the rest, well...
We started with a bibb lettuce sort of deconstructed cobb salad that was good, a little too dressing heavy and a celebrity tomato soup that was somewhat under flavored either in the tomatoes themselves or the salt. There seemed to be a lot of tomato based specials so I figured it was the way to go, but in retrospect it's probably too late in the season for peak tomatoes, strange then that they went this way.
Mains were the buffalo burger with fois gras and truffle fries and a short rib tagine with Israeli couscous. The burger was kind of watery/gamey and the fois was overcooked and added an off flavor to the whole thing. Even taken by itself on a piece of bread it was kind of leathery and unpleasant, and I LOVE fois gras, but not this bit. The truffle fries were great, perfect crispiness and truffle flavor.
The tagine was far too much food and not very good. The short ribs were fatty and the whole thing existed in a sort of fatty gravy that certainly overwhelmed the couscous but also made "mystery veg-fruit" out of chunks that seemed to be apricots, yam and maybe carrot? The larger couscous stood up to this rather leaden presentation better than traditional couscous would have, but compared to even mediocre Moroccan or Moroccan-esque tagines I've had, this was mediocre to poor.
The 3 ice creams for desert were good not great, frozen a bit too hard.
I was reluctant to write this because I was a big fan of Josie when they first opened and I was able to go more because I lived on the Westside. And like I said, the staff is great. I'm just hoping either I had an off night or, if there's someone who works there who sees this they might take it to heart as one hounders opinion and take a look at what they're doing these days.
