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Appalachia, newly opened near Old Street, London, is unlike anywhere else in town. It serves grits, pork rinds, collard greens, kilt salad, chow-chow relish and pot liquor. Ali Borer, formerly of Smoking Goat and Guy Ritchie’s Lore of the Land pub, and not remotely Appalachian himself, is cooking the food of yesteryear Scots-Irish mountain settlers who made their home in this sparse region of the eastern United States. Appalachians smoked, pickled and preserved just about any edible item they could get their hands on, because, well, needs must. London’s dining scene has ignored all this porky, liquory stuff until now, mainly because, let’s be frank, most British people’s understanding of Appalachia begins with the Burt Reynolds film Deliverance and ends with those guys from O Brother, Where Art Thou? stealing a chicken. Not only that but, just as many people would be unable to locate the Appalachian mountain region on a map, you might find it equally challenging to locate Nile Street, because it’s hidden away on the borders of Shoreditch, just around the back of Hackney.

The room itself is quite patentlya reclaimed old saloon bar, and you sit up at that bar watching Borer make your cornbread madeleines. And, holy heck, they’re good: cheddary, fiery, served hot with a nod to the cast-iron skillets of the mountain kitchen. The space isn’t terribly comfy and, much like Tollington’s Fish Bar and many other similarly hip indie spots, Appalachia feels more like a restaurant that’s simply making the best of its surroundings rather than truly inhabiting them. The downstairs space, meanwhile, has been turned into a whiskey and cocktail bar called Lowcountry, named after South Carolina’s coastal region, and each time you order a banana pudding sazerac made with brown butter-washed rye and absinthe, or a fat fashioned comprising bacon fat-washed bourbon and maple syrup, a server bearing a tray materialises from below, almost as if they’re ascending from a very well-stocked basement cupboard. The entire drinks list, by the way, is heaven for the non-drinker and for those who like to sway and wake with headaches. The former can enjoy Jörg Geiger’s fruit fermentations, Saicho sparkling teas and a really extraordinary olive lemonade; I also highly recommend the alcohol-free paloma, too.

The menu is a single, seasonally changing sheet on which Borer’s nerdy devotion to getting things right clearly shows. Chow-chow mignonette on British oysters tips a hat to that old pickling tradition, while the pot liquor poured over East Sussex mushrooms is essentially the liquid left over after cooking collard greens with smoked pork. There’s also a kilt salad for which hot bacon fat is poured over greens to wilt them. Then again, if pork is not your thing, you might well find Appalachia a bit testing, because rind, fat and various other piggy bits can be found nestling in many dishes. That said, the pimento cheeseburger with thick, hand-cut potato fries seemed to go down a storm, while vegetarians must – and I mean must – order the fried green tomato salad on a pickled ginger gravy base. These crunchy, breadcrumbed tomatoes are one of my favourite things in London right now; the glossy-topped hillbilly loaf with a quenelle of cultured apple butter is pretty fantastic, too.

To be honest, Appalachia feels like one of the absolutely hottest, most interesting spots in town. This is no theme bar, and not remotely a joke: they’re really, with full chested pride, doing proper Appalachian regional cooking on a side road near Old Street. Pull up a stool, and enjoy the butter-brined half chicken with miso grits and black pepper gravy, which was the star of our meal and reminded me of nothing so much as Sunday dinner on performance steroids. The beef tartare tostada that preceded it, however, turned up with so much spicy heat that the beef got slightly lost: brave and enjoyable, yes, but I doubt I’d ever order it again. The tongue and head skewer with an oyster sauce glaze was a reminder that here is a kitchen that strives to waste nothing, possibly in the great Appalachian tradition of being cut off from anything so much as resembling a Tesco Metro.

The banana pudding choux bun, with layers of vanilla custard and Biscoff crumb with salted caramel popping candy, was a Shoreditch riff on the most reliable dessert in the American south, the one you’ll see at every church potluck and family gathering from Tennessee to West Virginia. The bananas in Borer’s version, however, were so chewy that I sat in the taxi home wondering if they were actually plantain. Borer is cooking the best Appalachian food in the UK, not least because he’s cooking almost the only fried green tomato salad on this side of the Atlantic. I can’t pretend his place isn’t weird, but the weirdness is delicious.

• Appalachia 71 Nile Street, London N1 (no phone). Open lunch, Sat only, noon-2.30pm, dinner Weds-Sat 5-9.30pm (last orders). From about £40 a head à la carte, plus drinks & service