Josephine Brings Cozy Vibes and French-Italian Cooking to Silver Lake
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After 20 years cooking in some of the country’s most storied kitchens, there’s something about opening a restaurant with your best childhood friend that just feels like coming home. After opening inside a vintage Craftsman house in Silver Lake earlier this summer, Josephine draws from the personal nostalgia of two California natives, including family recipes reimagined, and nods to their 1990s childhood bedrooms. The buzzy new restaurant looks like equal parts dive bar and rustic Tahoe cabin, but feels like nonna’s house, with hearty slow-cooked dishes and pastas that lean heavily into French and Italian influences. Here are five things you need to know before dining at Josephine.
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It’s the product of a lifelong friendship.
After a shared childhood playing hockey together in San Jose, Anthony Dragotto and Marco Gagliardi worked in very different fields throughout most of their twenties and thirties. Gagliardi sharpened his culinary chops at spots like Zahav, Vetri Cucina, and High Street on Hudson in Philadelphia, as well as Bon Delire in San Francisco, while Dragotto worked in various industries, including tech sales, back in California.
It wasn’t until these two old friends reunited at the Oasis concert in Pasadena that they started cooking up the idea for Josephine. “We just kept talking about it, joking about it, drinking over it, and then we decided: ‘All right, screw it, let’s start a restaurant,” Gagliardi says. When it came time to brainstorm, they discovered another connection: both Marco’s great grandmother and Anthony’s grandmother shared the same first name. And just like that, Josephine was born.
The Silver Lake space was pivotal in shaping Josephine’s concept.
The duo didn’t originally plan to open in Silver Lake. Instead, they were thinking about opening a members-only, speakeasy-type restaurant in Chinatown with no sign and an unmarked entrance. “I realized that I didn’t really want to do that,” says Gagliardi. “I wanted to open a casual, fun place that made everyone feel like they were at home.”
A chance real estate find in the former Bowery Bungalow space was fortuitously timed. The 1950’s-era Craftsman house exudes the spirit of a cozy, retro living room. There are subtle references to the ‘90s throughout, including vintage cassette tapes, magazines, wall art, and a rotary phone, where guests can leave messages for each other. “I grew up in a time when you had posters all over your walls, so that’s where the idea came from,” Gagliardi explains.
The front bar area’s design feels like something out of 2011-era Williamsburg, Brooklyn with its painted original tin ceiling, subway-tile walls, and dark wooden furniture. To the left of the entrance, the main dining room has the feel of a woodsy Lake Tahoe home, with distressed wood paneled walls and leather booths. Gagliardi and Dragotto did all of the design work themselves: “We did more tearing down than we did adding new things in,” Gagliardi says, adding there will likely be more vintage wall art down the line.
The French menu influence is just as important as the Italian one.
Several dishes also incorporate French influences, a nod to Gagliardi’s time working at Bon Délire, as well as a childhood spent playing hockey and traveling around the country with various French-Canadian coaches. “I love Montreal, I love restaurants like Joe Beef, so I wanted to work in elements of French cuisine as well,” he says. For starters, Josephine aims to have the best roast chicken in Los Angeles, made using a Mary’s Heritage bird that’s slow roasted and served with lemon-thyme jus and roasted potatoes. But the steak frites are also getting a lot of attention, showcasing not only French but also a bit of Japanese influence, thanks to a sansho peppercorn sauce. Starters like beef tartare and a ricotta tart also round out the Gallic nods.
The pastas are a major focus, given the chef’s time working for Marc Vetri.
Gagliardi has an impressive resume, with the bulk of his experience falling under the Vetri umbrella at the chef’s restaurants in both Philly and Vegas. So tapping into his pasta-making skills for Josephine’s menu was essential. “I want everything to have that feeling of having heart,” he says. “It should taste like someone stood over this for hours.” Each month, there are two pastas that rotate seasonally. Currently, you’ll find a duck cannelloni with bechamel, fig gastrique and fresh horseradish, while earlier selections have included a lemony ricotta gnocchi with a crème fraîche-based sauce, inspired by Gagliardi’s grandmother’s recipe. “People love the intricacies of making the actual pasta, but for me, it’s the sauces,” Gagliardi says. The chef particularly excels at slow-cooked sauces, incorporating kitchen scraps and meat trim to enhance flavor (much like a grandmother would).
Don’t skip dessert, especially if you like small-batch ice cream.
A small dessert menu will alternate like the rest of the menu based on seasonal shifts. You’ll see more French inspiration in options like a blackberry clafoutis. But Gagliardi is especially proud to be serving the popular boutique ice cream brand Servet. “It’s somewhere in between gelato and ice cream,” he says. Currently, there’s a toasted rice flavor on offer, served in a cardamom magic shell.
