We’ve extolled the perfectly conically twirled spaghetti, thin, wood-fired pizza and other big-plate offerings at Josephine. Italian-fine is all the thing, this we know. But Josephine’s deep dish pizza and ginormous chicken Parm can feed a village, and have gained a reputation for such. The place also has a stealth bar menu that’s super friendly on the wallet and pretty good at sticking to your ribs.
Don’t look for it online; it’s not there. It’s just at the bar when you sit down and get handed a mini menu, and it’s just for happy hours (from 5 to 7 p.m.) and late-night (after 9 p.m.). But on that menu you can get meatball sliders, housemade mozzarella sticks, a slice of tomato pie, a pasta frittata, wood-roasted olives, hash browns and an anchovy butter roll, all for well under $10 a pop. You can get three of these tasty small servings for $15.
That last item is the most uncommon, a light parkerhouse roll filled with a pleasing offset of creamy butter and salty mini fish fillets – salt and butter, you can’t go wrong. (And there’s no bones to contend with.) The hash browns are another surprise: crispy cubes of potatoes with an egg wash and a slather of peppercorn aioli. Fried potato au gratin squares would be my way to tag them, but they’re definitely not your typical Sunday brunch side dish.
The pasta frittata is also something atypical, crispy and eggy with an assortment of chopped veggies, but if I’m going to partake in Josephine’s cult of the noodle, it’s hard not to go for one of the spaghetti dishes on the main menu, and the Sicilian tomato pie is exactly what you’d expect, doughy, moist bread with fresh mozzarella and a house marinara sauce (by Linny Ray, as listed on the menu). The nearly meal-sized mozz sticks (three big ones that use a breading similar to what’s on the chicken Parm) and meatball slider (one gloriously plump ball of juicy meat topped with mozzarella and tomato sauce) come dusted white under a fluffy mound of freshly shaved Parmesan. The key to both is to ask for an extra side of that Linny Ray’s marinara, which is a treasure in its own right, thick and zesty with a bit of a spicy bite that plays well with the natural tomato sweetness. (Any time there is marinara dipping sauce for a Parm or Parm sub, ask for an extra side of marinara.)
Also on the bar menu are Josephine’s lineup of suppli, basically arancini with a tomato-mozzarella filling, that you can get in chicken Parm, sausage and fontina-and-peas variations. They’re not part of the $15 menu, but the chicken Parm one is pretty fantastic. It also comes under a dusted mound of freshly shaved Parmesan cheese. Be sure to request a side of Linny Ray to dip into.
Josephine – a nod to Scelfo’s Italian roots that’s named after his grandmother – is a great neighborhood spot as well as an accommodating hotel bar. It even works as a sports bar or place to pull up, have a glass of wine and work through class notes or work emails. It has the same gathering-spot vibe as the Longfellow Bar in Harvard Square, which is also owned by chef Michael Scelfo and the HK Food Group behind Cambridge eateries Alden & Harlow and Waypoint. Josephine’s opening announcement in 2023 was met with controversy due to allegations around the collaborative’s management style and work environment.
Josephine, 515 Somerville Ave., Spring Hill, Somerville
Tom Meek is a writer living in Cambridge. His reviews, essays, short stories and articles have appeared in the WBUR ARTery, The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, The Rumpus, The Charleston City Paper and SLAB literary journal. Tom is also a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and rides his bike everywhere.
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