Book online only at 1251.co.uk. Snacks £3-£7.50, plates £9-£16, desserts £8-£10, wines from £17.95
How’s this for an irresistible offer? The website jamescochran.co.uk is offering you “a unique chance to participate in the extraordinary success of one talented chef”. Just sign up for one of the recipe plans and for as little as £25 a week your restaurant could be offering the famed James Cochran ® “Signature Jamaican Jerk Chicken. Marinaded in Buttermilk and Secret James Cochran ® Spice mix”. London Evening Standard critic Fay Maschler described it as “the best fried chicken” when she tried it at the restaurant James Cochran E3. You want in? Of course you do. Just one thing. While you may be participating in the success of one talented chef, the chef himself won’t be any longer.
This needs a little unpicking, given that it’s about the tortuous business of trademarks. To understand the story, we must go back to late 2016 when James Cochran E3 opened on Bevis Marks, in London’s Square Mile. As the name above the door indicated, it was all about the food of an intriguing half-Jamaican half-Scottish chef, raised in Whitstable, who had worked at both the Ledbury and the Harwood Arms. Pace the fried chicken he could do comfort food, but he could also go refined. Pigeon might turn up with liquorice. Herdwick lamb might arrive with Jerusalem artichokes.
A few weeks ago, Cochran announced he had parted company with his original backers. This meant he had also parted company with the commercial use of his own name, because his business partners had registered it as a trademark. Further, it transpired they had done so as a vehicle through which to license recipes Cochran had devised while in their employment. Yours for £25 a week.
Necessarily I must point out this is all legal. Contracts were signed and so on. It’s also not the first time someone finds themselves no longer in control of their name. For the last years of his life Antonio Carluccio was not controlling Carluccio’s (for which he was amply rewarded). There’s a disclaimer on the website pointing out that Cochran no longer works for the brand and says only that “negotiations became deadlocked and no deal was struck”. Cochran had no equity in the business. What’s peculiar is that they make much of the fact that anyone who buys the recipes of the departed chef will be benefiting from Cochran’s recent appearance on television, by which they mean Great British Menu. As I say it’s all legal. But that doesn’t stop it being really, really weird.
Cochran told the website London Eater that it had been a “huge learning curve”. Happily, he has moved on to his new restaurant in Islington, called 1251. From eating there, I can say this. At his best he’s a terrific cook: bold, imaginative and fun. But there is also an air of just-managed chaos about his venture. When I ate there the dishes arrived in a weird order. Some are brilliant and some are total head-scratchers. Service comes and goes like cloud cover in April. The space is two long rooms, one on top of the other, reached through what feel like separate front doors. And yet there’s enough interesting stuff going on here to stop you grabbing them by the collar and bellowing “pull yourselves together”.
The menu is divided between “snacks” and larger “plates”. The kitchen will send them out when they’re ready. They really will and they won’t be stopped. Which is why we get a main course lamb dish first, followed five minutes later by a piece of soda bread with whipped butter. The lamb is as beautifully accessorised as a Bond Street fashionista: there’s a dollop of whipped cod’s roe, some baby artichokes and the carefully managed astringency of black olive. The meat itself is just on the “watch me bleed” side of rare. The nutty bread arrives in time to dab at it.
More interesting is the caramelised cauliflower with a heap of crushed walnuts and the savoury stab of “fermented bagna cauda”, or anchovy and garlic. It turns cauliflower into a pleasing bruiser. We lurch back into the big plates, with a large half roast onion in a limpid onion broth with, on the side, what’s described as a sourdough cream, but we’ll call bread sauce because we’re old-fashioned like that. There are grand flavours here, but the translucent onion is relentless. It’s an allium hunting for a hamburger to call home.
After that everything picks up. The buttermilk chicken isn’t on the menu, perhaps because he didn’t want to pay for a licence to use his own recipe. Instead there is a moreish buttermilk rabbit with the aniseed waft of tarragon and the punch of horseradish. I could eat bowls of it. Only professionalism stops me doing so. Jerk spiced hake is a brave and brilliant dish. All the spicing is there but it doesn’t brutalise the delicacy of the fish. Small cubes of watermelon sweeten it all up.
Potato “spaghetti” doesn’t quite explain its own name – there are three cylinders of potato on the plate – but they come draped in a creamy overcoat of truffle, egg and burnt butter. It’s like a carbonara without the bacon. But the star dish is an umami bomb of pork fillet, topped with battered and deep-fried smoked eel, like the best bacon, with an eel sauce, miso and turnip kimchi.
Unlike so many places self-consciously surfing the wave of food modernity, 1251 does not wimp out at dessert and plonk a few creamy things in a bowl. Two flaky, caramelised slices of puff pastry encase whorls of honey-boosted cream around pieces of soft pear. On top is a bright yogurt sorbet. Another plate brings a cake of salted caramel ice cream, between two crisp tuiles, with strawberries, white chocolate and peanuts. It’s sweet in all the right places. Ooh, yes please and thank you.
We look around for a waiter to give us the bill, but having been omnipresent through earlier courses, he’s now gone. Five minutes later he suddenly reappears. James Cochran has been through a lot recently and, as he says, he’s learned much. I hope he carries on learning because at his best he really is touched with brilliance. All his restaurant needs now is a little focus.
News bites
For a similarly quirky spirit head to Bristol. Those words could apply to numerous places but try Box-e, which occupies a former shipping container. The menu is short. Then again, the kitchen is tiny. Try crushed Jersey royals with smoked trout and horseradish, hake with mussels and a summer vegetable pistou and finish with chocolate mousse with passion fruit and coconut (boxebristol.com).
Curious product of the week: little known pili nuts from the Philippines, dusted with Ecuadorian Cacao from snack company Mount Mayon. Recently it was declared the supreme champion at the Great Taste Awards. Very nice they are, too: crisp, light, sweet and almost moreish. I say almost, because at Selfridges an 85g bag (that’s 3oz in old money) costs £15.99. Ouch (mountmayon.com).
Sad news: the Red Fort, which opened on Dean Street in London’s Soho in 1983, has closed. As well as being a Soho fixture it was, under restaurateur Amin Ali, a trail blazer for quality Indian restaurants in Britain. It will be missed.
Wasted Calories and Ruined Nights: a Journey Deeper into Dining Hell by Jay Rayner is published by Guardian Faber at £5. Order a copy for £4.30 at guardianbookshop.com
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
