Grace Dent reviews James Cochran N1: I was flummoxed but definitely fed

Angel Shopping Centre is the inauspicious setting for this distinctive Scottish-meets-Jamaican menu
Second sitting: James Cochran's Islington site follows his debut restaurant in the City
Grace Dent12 October 2017

Ambience 2/5

Food 4/5

Doing anything other than shopping in a shopping centre is, frankly, a little common, which is why I’m often happiest in Westfield having my nails done.

Life is hard and endless, and sometimes I just want a stranger to hold my hand and paint it OPI ‘I’m Not Really A Waitress’ crimson while we listen to ‘White Flag’ by Dido. Other non-shopping things I recommend include eating a giant pretzel and enjoying the vibrating massage chairs – but never, ever drinking champagne on a tall stool. I’m a bit common; I’m not a savage.

So, this said, James Cochran opening his second place, serving his lauded and heavily distinctive Scottish/Jamaican menu, in the Angel Central Shopping Centre, N1, is not a problem to me. It becomes one when the address is given as Unit R7, Parkfield Street, in a bid to fudge the fact, meaning my taxi bunged me out by the bins in a dark delivery bay at 8pm.

Opening restaurants and driving taxis are still a man’s world. Anyway, I located James Cochran N1 eventually despite the ground-floor entry being confusingly home to the takeaway counter, which one must walk past. On a Friday night, in spite of remarkably decent cooking at the original James Cochran EC3, the place was deserted. I’m not saying this is due to the premises, but I’m writing this wearing the same expression as Kevin McCloud being told Tarquin and Chloe are building their Grand Designs multimillion-pound papier-mâché eco-wigwam next to a river.

Ok, so that’s the kvetching. The flipside is that there’s great food happening here, such as the highly inhalable Jamaican jerk buttermilk chicken with sweet, devilish Scotch Bonnet jam. Cochran’s food rocks with both Kingston conviviality and a Glasgow end-of-the-night Munchy Box order. I could live for one week happily on endless plates of the cauliflower cheese and marmite croquettes. Everything on the ‘snacks’ side of this abstemious, single-sheet menu is glorious tapas for the tipsy. Sourdough bread with smoked bone-marrow butter sit alongside crispy chicken skin with padrón pepper mayonnaise. Despite Watership Down ruining the eating of bunnies for me decades ago, I managed to clear a plate of ‘cigars’ made from rabbit, fennel, stem ginger and smoked paprika.

We grazed on the lemony pudding for hours without impact before accepting it may be growing bigger

The mains are, well, flatbreads with toppings, starting at about £14, although the toppings are fancy. Haunch of Berkshire venison, for example, on a Douglas Fir flatbread with pear. Or wild mushrooms on truffle. We chose treacle-glazed shin of beef on smoked sour cream with pickled chilli and ‘turnip marmalade’ which, yes, sounds like something desperate one might be surviving on in the Hebrides 12 years after a zombie apocalypse, but tasted sweetly delicious. The Cornish monkfish (£18) with satay sauce and aubergine yoghurt flatbread was underwhelming.

And can I say again that, even after two glasses of Mapachi Cabernet Sauvignon, this still is a strange restaurant? Do the staff realise how strange it is? Have they been in any other restaurants? They’re selling flatbreads for £14 in a badly lit room, upstairs in a shopping centre. The only thing dragging people in is James Cochran’s name and he’s not here. We ordered a buttermilk lemon curd pudding to share. It transpired to be an enormous wine glass full of sugary gunk. The sort of glass you buy your Auntie Susan who has ‘only one drink a night’, but you all know that’s a two-litre bottle of vin de table. Two of us grazed on the lemony gloop for what felt like hours making little impact before accepting it may be growing bigger. We left in a faintly hysterical mood. I was flummoxed but definitely fed, and that’s the main thing.

James Cochran N1

1 Estrella £4.20

2 Glasses of White Edition £13

1 Cauliflower croquettes £4.50

1 Jerk chicken £7

1 Rabbit cigars £7.50

1 Beef flatbread £15

1 Monkfish flatbread £18

1 Bottle of Mapachi £27

1 Buttermilk pudding £6.50

2 Glasses of Mapachi £14.40

Total £117.10

Unit R7, 35 Parkfield Street, N1 (020 3489 2090; jamescochran.co.uk)

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