Josie’s Corner Cafe & Bakeshop

Perfect place to enjoy a sandwich, a cookie, and a cup of coffee without spending half a paycheck.
Clean, nice attendant, and best cookies.

This place is so darn adorable!!! The food is great, and the environment is very cozy and comforting. Long story short: Try it out!

This place was close to where I had an appointment so I decided to walk a few blocks and grab some lunch. Any eatery that is named after my grandmother gets a try and the bar is high.
The place sits right on the corner at the far North edge of downtown so you can miss the traffic clutter. It is a nicely decorated and clean little diner with cheerful and an eager to help wait staff.
I ordered a turkey sandwich on wheat with all of the normal extras, lettuce, tomato and mayo. The sandwich was okay but nothing to separate it from any other sandwich. I had a chocolate chip cookie for dessert with a cup of coffee and I really enjoyed that cookie.
I would return for lunch again if I was in the area but I wouldn’t go too far out of my way.

This place is a small quaint little bake shop that is an excellent place to stop in and have lunch.
Their pricing is fair and food is delicious.
Mmm cookies

This is a GREAT little place!
My wife had heard that Josie’s has great knoephla soup, and since we’re transplants here that have only recently discovered knoephla we wanted to try more of it! Unfortunately, they were out of all their soups except tomato by the time we got there (3pm) but they still impressed me with one simple act– when they run out of something for the day, they erase it off their chalkboard menu! Little things like that attention to detail make me swoon, and a lot of Craigslist posters could learn a lesson from it!
So I’m sad they’re out of knoephla, but I love their attention to detail.
Next, I put them up against what I believe to be the most strenuous test a lunch place can endure. I ordered a Rueben sandwich.
Let’s get something straight: a Rueben is corned beef, sauerkraut, swiss cheese, and Russian dressing on rye and served hot. Thousand Island will do in a pinch. If you use pastrami or coleslaw it’s a Rachel. If you use turkey I don’t even know what to say to you. For such a simple sandwich, it can be a tricky one to make well. Your ingredients have to be quality, and your ratios have to be balanced.
Josie’s makes a good Rueben.
They grill/​toast it on a panini machine, which is fine by me because your fingers don’t get all greasy from holding the bread like they would if it was done on a flattop grill (like grilled cheese). It could have been a just touch heavier on sauerkraut and used a third less dressing, but it didn’t feel like they skimped on anything. I’d give it an 8.5 out of 10.
Then come the sweets. :)
I don’t have a ridiculous sweet tooth, so I was perfectly content with a piece of shortbread. It was buttery and delicious and wonderful. I think it was the freshest shortbread I’ve ever had. I fell a little in love. My wife got two sweets but I only remember one– a peanut butter cookie sandwich with chocolate frosting (nutella?) in the middle. She loves chocolate, but even she said the frosting was a bit heavy. They could probably cut the amount in half, but everyone has different tastes and one thing I was warned about when I moved here was North Dakota’s sweet tooth.
The last thing was the espresso. This was a little disappointing. I started by ordering an Americano, but before the order was in switched to the straight espresso. Except it came out tasting like an Americano anyway. I don’t know if the grind wasn’t right, or there wasn’t enough coffee, or the water wasn’t hot enough… Something was off. Good espresso should have a crema (that’s not misspelled) on top from the oils in the beans emulsifying in the process, and it should be so strong that most Americans can’t tolerate it. Coffee concentrate. This wasn’t. This «espresso» was only about as strong as I normally take my coffee anyhow. Good, but not really espresso.
The interior is nice without being pretentious, and the woman running the storefront was friendly and wonderful. It was a very welcoming place and we’ll almost certainly return.

Josie’s is just a great little place at north end of Broadway in downtown Fargo. I’ve had very good box lunches from Josie’s in the past, but what I really like are their baked goods. Cookies, bars, scones and more. They are all outstanding.
Between the homestyle baked goods and the small town shop feel, Josie’s is a warm and comfortable place that is conducive to taking a seat and having a nice conversation over coffee.

Nice variety of desserts and sandwiches. Coffee drinks could be worked on. Good neighborhood hangout.

I decided to stop here for breakfast after work one morning (I work overnights), and I was glad I did! This place has the best pies/​cookies/​breads, but I’ve never had a sandwich of any kind before now. I got myself a Breakfast Sandwich made on one of their homemade croissants with sausage, cheese and egg, and I got my wife an English Muffin Breakfast Sandwich with bacon, cheese and egg. While I was waiting for the sandwiches, I found myself wandering around their shop and looking at all the other goodies around there. Needless to say, by the time the young lady had finished preparing our sandwiches I had two loaves of bread in my hands, and two pieces of pie chosen out of their display case!
The sandwiches were great, and the fact that they were made with bread baked just an hour earlier made all the difference! The loaves of bread I had purchased were Banana and Lemon Poppy Seed, and they tasted exactly like the ones my grandmother used to bake when I was a kid! Later that day, we enjoyed our pies (Pumpkin and Apple) with our lunch at home; delicious!
Fargo truly is lucky to have a place like Josie’s, and I hope everyone here knows that! Also, I guess they run a Milk & Cookie special during the week for $ 1.50, so take the kids here after school for an afternoon snack!

Josies is a great place to get a fix for sweets like grandma used to make. They also serve other food. My main vice at this place is the pumpkin cookies topped with what I can only assume is mounds of fatty sugary goodness. The soups are always spot on and hit home for me as well. I have yet to try the panini sandwiches, but I hear good things.

We were looking for breakfast places, and I didn’t find this through Unilocal,which is a first, but an ad in the paper. The ad tries to lure you in with pancakes. Then I see a guy carrying a bag of mix and the syrup is condiment style. So I get eggs, only scrambled are offered. They are solid, cup size things, and bacon. Breakfast is almost an afterthought. I don’t know why they bother. They have lots of desserts on display why not go for muffins. One was a pink strawberry starburst pie. It looked delicious. The shortbread was absolute perfection. With so many coffee houses around it’s like this place wanted to offer something more. They seem to have a good lunch selection. There is no AC. It reminds me of the Caf on Eastenders where you go for something quick just not breakfast.