Jimi Famurewa reviews 1251: A pretty irresistible case for James Cochran’s vision of cooking

Nostalgia-fuelled haunt: 1251
Jimi Famurewa @jimfam1 November 2018

Ambience 3/5

Food 4/5

If you glance at the digital clock-style lettering outside 1251 — British chef James Cochran’s new Upper Street restaurant — and see a random sequence of numbers, it’s completely understandable.

But if, instead, you look at it and start quietly humming The Strokes song of the same name, then we are clearly of the same Trash-frequenting, Gazelle-sporting early Noughties indie stock, and I will take that as an invitation to bore on endlessly about the first Yeah Yeah Yeahs album.

To be living in an age when fine-dining establishments are naming themselves after middling, 15-year-old rock songs is quite something. But there is logic to Cochran seeing significance in a track that marked a high-stakes follow-up to a critically acclaimed debut. Because this is his first opening since he parted ways with Liverpool Street’s James Cochran EC3, a still active restaurant that, thanks to a surreal, ongoing rights dispute, exclusively owns the trademark to his name.

At 1251 Cochran has once again plundered his Scottish and Saint Vincent heritage (plus the influence of a childhood in Whitstable) for a menu that’s split into shareable ‘snacks’ and ‘plates’. On paper, Kentish-Scots-Caribbean is the stuff of a disastrous ‘fusion cuisine’ task on The Apprentice. But filtered through the prism of Cochran’s personal experience and combined with his dazzling, Jenga tower approach to building flavour, it makes mad, brilliant sense, right from when my mate Mark and I sat down for lunch.

Goat kromeski (a Polish croquette, basically) brought a trio of golden-brown breaded cubes, filled with luscious pink strands of slow-cooked meat and doused in a pineapple chutney that had forceful heat to match its tropical sweetness. Pickled white crab Devon tartlet conjured the bracing essence of a wind-whipped seafood stand, while the oozy, indulgent filling of a smoked haddock and leek toastie made up for house-made brioche that lacked structure and oomph.

Buttermilk jerk chicken — gorgeously craggy bits of succulent, patiently brined bird with tongue-prickling blobs of Scotch bonnet jam — had its crunch ingeniously boosted by a scattering of crumbled corn nuts. And Tamworth pork — served with splats of subtle smoked eel cream, a brooding, spicy hunk of blood pudding and umamified turnip kimchi — was a Sunday roast of the gods, bearing an aerated, thick slab of crackling that shattered loudly enough to alert nearby car alarms. Potato with cured egg yolk revealed itself to be tightly wound yo-yos of tapered spud, covered in truffle and custardy burnt cream.

We sipped happily at our drinks (a Brick Brewery beer for me, a sun-prompted Murcian rosé for Mark) unaware that pudding was about to nudge everything up several levels. Billed as a ‘malted Hobnob’, it was a wholly NSFW stack of giant chocolate biscuit, mousse-like ‘dark chocolate malt’, hidden banana cream, snowflakes of ‘cocoa nib ash’ and a glossy quenelle of goat’s milk ice cream. It reminded Mark of the chocolate Rice Krispies squares at school. It made me think of a childhood treat that involved shaking a hefty spoon of Ovaltine over Wall’s vanilla ice cream.

It will probably remind you of all manner of nostalgic things, too. But this is the way of 1251, a restaurant that puts forward a pretty irresistible case for Cochran’s vision of soulful, foot-on-the-amp cooking, touched by a sense of joyous, grinning nostalgia.

Nostalgic dishes in London

1/4

1251

2 Brick Brewery pilsners £10.50

1 Monastrell Rosado £4.75

1 Buttermilk chicken £7.50

1 Crab tartlet £6

1 Goat kromeski £6

1 Haddock toastie £5.50

1 Pork £17

1 Potato truffle £15

1 Malted hobnob £10

2 Americanos £6

Total £88.25

107 Upper Street, N1, 1251.co.uk

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