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My wife and I celebrated our First Anniversary with a delicious dinner at Josie in Santa Monica. I wanted to go somewhere nice, with a varied menu and a mellow atmosphere. Josie meets all three of those criteria.

Josie looks tiny from the outside, but the two separate dining rooms actually can fit a decent number of tables. We checked in for our reservation and were shown to, what we thought was, the best seat in the house. The table was in the corner against the wall, we both sat on the cushioned bench, one on each side of the corner. We had a view of the dining room, the chef’s window in the kitchen, and of course the rest of the diners. Josie’s interior is classy in mellow way, with deep green walls, white trim and white linen table cloths.

Our server arrived shortly after we sat down and opened our wine. Since it was Monday, there was no corkage fee (every Monday is no-corkage). I picked up a 2000 Montecalvi at Wine Expo over the weekend and it was a great start to the meal. I checked the menu before we went and had already narrowed my choices, so when the waiter described two amazing sounding specials (duck and halibut), I was a bit thrown off my game. I am generally not good at pairing wine and food, however I really wanted to have this wine with some flavorful meat, so I did stay the course and ordered the rack of lamb. My wife choose the rib eye.

Before our appetizers arrived, an amuse-bouche was served. It was a small piece of wild mushroom quiche. At first, I thought it might be a bit heavy to kick start our taste buds, but the egg was light and fluffy, the mushrooms flavorful and the crust was buttery and incredibly flakey, almost like a puff pastry.

After our taste buds were tantalized, the appetizers came out. I opted for the soup of the day, which was a luxurious tomato soup with a poached earlygirl tomato in the middle. The early girl was also stuffed with a light goat cheese. The tomato broke open almost like a soft poached egg, but instead of the yolk, tasty soft goat chesse spilled out. My wife branched out from her usual orders and started with the Skewered Seppia with Merguez Sausage. What exactly is that? It is baby cuttlefish seared with lemon and herbs, over a warm Beluga lentil and fennel salad seasoned with mustard seed oil. The cuttlefish was amazingly tender and I was able to steal one from the plate.

After a brief break where our table was cleaned, silverware replenished and wine glasses filled, our main dishes came out. My wife’s rib eye was served medium rare and was sliced and laid in a mellow peppercorn sauce. She also had a generous portion of garlic mashed potatoes and a small watercress salad. The rib eye was tender and juicy, it nearly melted in my mouth (yes, I stole a little beef too). The suprise of her dish was the watercress salad. It came topped with bleu cheese and had some candied garlic cloves. I never had anything like them, little sweet and, well, mildly garlic morsels that had a terrific flavor balance.

My rack of lamb came arranged with three ribs? racks? I don’t know what the official word is, but I assume that it is ribs. One of the ribs was actually a double bone and the plump morsels of meat proved to be plenty to fill me up. I don’t know if it was on purpose, but the three pieces of lamb were actually a bit different. One was very lean, one had a bit of fat and one was in between. I assume that it was just happenstance, but I would be impressed if a chef presented their meat in that manner. Personally, I like lamb to have a lamb-y flavor and this lamb fit the bill. It was mild, not overpowering, but I knew than I was eating lamb and that it was uniquely not beef.

Even after all that, we had room to share a dessert. We debated between the key lime cheesecake and the Pots de Creme Brulee - three different flavors of creme brulee. We opted for the chesecake which had baked blueberries sprinkled throughout and fresh whipped cream on top. The cheesecake itself was much more creamy than solid, like a standard cheesecake. We managed to clean the plate and were intensely satisfied with the whole meal.

Josie is a great choice for a special dinner, the mood inside is just a little somber, but very comfortable. I would love to continue exploring the menu in the future…

Josie
2424 Pico Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90405
(310) 581-9888

By Jonah (see more of his posts). Jonah is the founder of la.foodblogging and also created Digesty, a food blog aggregator and Cheww.com, a spam free foodblog search engine.