Cuisine: French
Address: 97 Amoy Street, Singapore 069917
Nearest MRT: Telok Ayer Station (Downtown line)

Josephine is a French restaurant and wine bar located along the popular Amoy Street, within walking distance from Telok Ayer Station and also from Chinatown. It is a trendy modern French bistro-style restaurant in the heart of Singapore District & vibrant Amoy Street.

I was expecting the restaurant to be very crowded since it was Valentine’s Day when we had visited. Surprisingly, the restaurant did not have a gimmicky Valentine’s Day menu or try to mark up the prices. The original menu is still applicable on this special day and we could order whatever that we wanted. Since this is a French wine bar, with a wide range of French wines, we decided to get a bottle of red wine to share. We got the Chateau Puyanche – Cotes de Bordeaux ($68 per bottle) as we were having some meat dishes. The wine was decent but towards the end when it was getting more saturated for us, the aftertaste of the wine felt a bit bitter.

For starters, we decided to share a French onion soup ($14). It is served with compte cheese toast which was crispy and delicious. The soup had a hint of curry that was detected by my wife. I quite like the flavours of the soup, except that there is a layer of oil on the surface. This is probably due to the melted cheese.

Next up, this is the Parmentie de Canard ($28) which is made up of shredded duck leg, mashed potatoes and onion. Usually, we would be eating the grilled duck leg with some mashed potato on the side, but at Josephine, they decided to make it into a baked potato dish. While the potato was soft and creamy, the shredded duck did not have much taste after being baked together as a dish.

The other main dish that we ordered is the Wagyu spider steak ($38), as recommended by the waiter. It is the premium steak on the menu, and it comes with one sauce and one side. We chose black pepper sauce and gratin dauphinois. While we had high expectations for this steak, but it kind of fell through. Since the slab of meat was quite uneven in thickness, this also showed through in the doneness of the meat. Some parts were too rare while other parts were overcooked, when we had ordered for rare in doneness. The sauce complimented the steak and the side of potato gratin provided the carbs for this dish.

We were impressed with the impressive service at Josephine. Even though the staff were busy serving many customers on that day, but they regularly checked in on us and asked about the food. We had a good experience, but not sure if we would like to come back for the steak again.

Other attractive perks of Josephine include:

Sat Free Flow package options – Just Prosecco ($25), Prosecco and Oysters ($35), exclusively only on Saturdays and limited to 1.5 hour per patron.

There is also another promo on Thursday nights, where you get a dozen oysters for free if you purchase a bottle of wine. That is a very good deal too, especially if you like wine and oysters!

Perhaps I’ll be back here again to try out the other dishes. The desserts also look enticing, but as we were very full after dinner, we chose to skip the dessert. Salut!