Appalachia, N1

Country cooking with city style

One of the rare downsides of a dining scene as sprawling as London’s is that it’s not all that often you find genuine firsts. Appalachia might just be one.

I can’t find much evidence that London has ever had a self-proclaimed Appalachian restaurant. That’s no surprise, really. This city’s never been much good for southern food, middling barbecue joints aside, and Appalachian is a niche within a niche: rustic mountain food, primarily drawn from the southern end of a range that stretches from Alabama to Canada.

Appalachia isn’t an attempt to introduce Londoners to a new cuisine with exacting authenticity, and nor should it be. While co-owner Ryan Sheehan hails from nearby Georgia, head chef Ali Borer is a Brit who grew up in Wales, best known for his time cooking at Thai restaurant Smoking Goat. I’m not sure he’s the man to teach us how his ma made grits.

Instead, his menu smartly draws on unexpected common ground between classic Appalachian cooking and modern London small plates culture. After all, you don’t have to squint that hard to see how a cuisine built around pork, pickles, and preserves might prove a hit with Londoners these days.

The space makes the approach clear immediately. Appalachia has taken over what was formerly Counter71, a small but airy spot at the north end of Shoreditch, its compact open-plan kitchen wrapped by countertop seating. The tall windows and slabs of green marble don’t exactly scream “rugged and rustic,” though the dimly lit bar downstairs leans into that sense just a fraction more.

Lowcountry actually precedes Appalachia, but the two make a comfortable fit, with cocktails on offer upstairs and the full food menu available to order from below. Lowcountry boasts an extensive, rotating whiskey collection, many of which are drawn from the States, but the cocktail menu does just as much to lean into the theme. A Hot Green Tomato uses jalapeño tequila and tomato water to great effect, while the Chow-Chow Martini combines vodka, sake, vermouth, and a sharp touch from the pickling liquid for a regional relish of the same name. I’d only steer clear of the Kool-Aid Kollins, which is a little too true to its name: sickly sweet with a chemical tang.

In fact, I suspect my next visit will be to Lowcountry itself, where it might feel more appropriate to drop in for a drink or two and a few options from the snackier end of the menu. There’s dense cornbread baked in the fluted shape of a madeleine; fluffy, glossy slabs of so-called “hillbilly loaf” with cultured apple butter; oysters dressed with the same chow-chow relish that powers the martinis. All are good, but none are a patch on the tongue and head skewers: quivering cuboids of gelatinous meat, slick with a sticky-sweet oyster sauce glaze and dusted with an ingenious sprinkle of ground pork crackling and chives. Think finely layered potato pavé, but every ounce of carbohydrate replaced with fatty flesh: a total triumph, and a dish that by all rights should make Appalachia’s name.

The rest of the menu’s strongest hits stick more closely to the country classics, though usually with some slight twist. A smoked pork chop rests on top of exceptional collard greens, its juices slowly mingling with the unexpectedly strong hit of spice that runs through the greens. The other obvious sharing main is a half roast chicken accompanied by rich, buttery grits and a black pepper gravy, spiked by a hit of miso. For dessert I implore you to order the all-American peach cobbler, given an Anglo edge with the inclusion of rhubarb.

Other dishes are more outright inventive, though here results are variable. A smart salad pairs soft, fleshy tomatoes and firm spring asparagus with a handful of fried green tomatoes, a southern staple that Borer cleverly repurposes as a crisp, juicy variant on the crouton. By contrast duck heart tacos are packed with promise, but the thick, homemade flour tortilla is laden with pickles and salad that overwhelm the subtle flavour of the meat. Or there’s the almost overwhelming mountain of thick-cut mushrooms in a “potlikker” — though I can’t quite tell how it relates to the brothy dish that usually bears that name — which are plump and meaty, with a welcome sweet glaze, but feel oddly paired with a deep-fried duck egg, the plate never quite cohering into a whole.

I don’t mind these occasional stumbles though. For one, nothing falls entirely flat — there’s some exceptional element to every plate, the collard greens here or the fried tomatoes there. But there’s also such a strong, clear throughline to the concept, latching the flavours of the American south on to British produce and small plate styles. It makes the Anglo-Appalachian pairing feel intuitive, even obvious, in a city where most people probably couldn’t find the Appalachians on a map (making no comment on my own geographic aptitude).

So yes, Appalachia might be a first for London. But the smartest thing it does is take what’s new and use it to lean into what the city — and its chefs — already do best.

My meal was paid for by Appalachia, but the restaurant had no editorial involvement in the review. Read my ethics policy to find out more.