Balance of power

Ask a London taxi driver to take you to Richmond Way, W14, and he'll probably scratch his head and think for a second. This drab street, filled with flats and launderettes, is hidden away behind Shepherd's Bush Underground station, but it is home to one of the capital's most interesting restaurants.

It is hard to find owners more dedicated to providing high-quality food at reasonable prices than at Chinon. Proprietors Jonathan Hayes and Barbara Deane go way beyond the call of duty to find the best suppliers: game from the New Forest; unusual vegetables and herbs from Kent; and scallops and squid from the Devon coast.

The restaurant offers serious cooking with an element of surprise, which has been rewarded with a star in the Egon Ronay's Guides and a score of three out of five in the Good Food Guide.

Irishman Jonathan Hayes, now 44, came to London from County Clare when he was 17. "I used to play folk and jazz in restaurants in the early 1970s, then I worked as a washer-up, helped with vegetable prep, and gradually did more and more cooking. When I met Barbara, she was cooking for dining rooms.

"Twenty years ago you could rent a restaurant quite reasonably with none of today's prohibitive premiums. Our first venture was a vegetarian place in Notting Hill called Naturally, which combined live music and food."

The duo moved in 1979 to a new restaurant, the Perfumed Conservatory, in west London's Fulham. During their five-year stay, Hayes's cooking drew ever warmer praise from the guides.

Few realise Hayes's Fulham kitchen was a rung on the ladder to stardom for Marco Pierre White and Bruno Loubet. Both worked there for several months before moving on to grander addresses, "though neither of them would ever admit it now," chuckles Hayes.

Watching the development of Hayes's cooking at Chinon over the past eight years, one is struck by his love of strong flavours, reined in by a lightness of touch and an innate sense of which tastes work best with each other.

One discerns in the Hayes cuisine a musician's love of harmony and counterpoint. The man, though, is more down to earth: "I think it's just balance, basically. I always try a dish before giving it to a customer; if it doesn't work, I take it off - it's trial and error."

His open ravioli of scallops with coriander (£9.50) illustrates a boldness of flavours tempered with the lightest of textures. "It's an open ravioli because it's not done the same way as ordinary ravioli, which is tacked together. I've seen lots of chefs do ravioli and they've bastardised it. It just doesn't work; the pasta is stuck together and too heavy.

"Doing it as an open ravioli means this doesn't happen. The dish is cooked to order, rather than prepped the afternoon before dinner. It's ideal for very quick service - the ultimate in fresh cooking.

"I love the flavour of fresh coriander, and so do our customers; this dish is one of our best sellers. We use diver-caught scallops, though it is not easy to find them. I use several suppliers to see who's got the best on a certain day."

Sourcing meat and game is less of a headache: "We've a good game supplier, with saddles of hare, game and venison, and we tend to use a local butcher for beef. He gets the size we want and hangs it for us, whereas standard butchers often use "Crivak" packs - lots of meats are going that way, with EU regulations all changing.

"Mrs Smith of Appledore Salads, Kent, does all our herbs and salad leaves; also baby vegetables - very interesting stuff, the sort of things our regular salad guy can't get."

A main course of roast new-season lamb topped with duxelles, smoked garlic and bacon sauce with tomato fondant (£14.50) is a medley of vivid flavours: the lamb is slightly sweet, the sauce an infusion of smoked garlic, bacon and reduced chicken stock.

Hayes adds a tomato fondant, which he likes for its intermediary flavour - between the sweetness of the lamb and the smoky pungency of the sauce. The fondant is the residue of a tomato concassée, so first the tomatoes and peppers must be de-skinned and the bitter green veins of the garlic taken out.

Tempura vegetables are a light contrast to the lamb. At Chinon, root vegetables and sometimes French beans are put into a tempura mix and deep-fried at 108ºC. Hayes likes to try changes, though. "Sometimes I put Provenáal vegetables, very finely chopped, into the flour mix. Smoked garlic, which I discovered in France, is a key ingredient."

Until recently, Hayes and Deane owned a house in the Charente region of France, near Cognac. Did they find eating in France an inspiration? "Not really," says Hayes, "it's been disappointing. One or two things, of course, but nothing that has fired me into thinking, how can I do that?

"We do enjoy eating out in London, though. There's always someone doing something different. Chefs these days are using everything from all round the world - what they call magpie cooking - which is good, if you can balance it right. The trouble is that some chefs take things and put them on plates without thinking at all whether they go together."

The menus at Chinon are a changing carte of seven starters, and the same number for main courses and desserts. The average spend for three courses, coffee and a bottle of the good house wine is about £70 for two, plus an optional 12.5% service charge. Order a couple of starters - the crab bisque, say, and tempura of prawns and squid, with a glass of wine, and you can get away with well under £20 a head.

Particularly popular dishes this winter have been the breast of duck with purée of swede and Marsala sauce (£13) and, for the same price, saddle of venison with sweet and sour red cabbage cooked with apples and potato galette, garnished with black pudding.

The chocolate tart is a triumph and extremely simple to make. For Hayes, a great dish is not one that never changes. "It's good to have a dish time and time again, but it's also nice to have many varieties of it as well."

He believes that in the current climate, stars and awards are not that important for the majority of chefs. "It's the survival of your restaurant that matters. Keeping ahead of food trends, without following every fad and going to extremes, is important - but so is price.

People don't want over-the-top prices. Our customers tend to eat out only once or twice a month these days. So you have to keep a balance, governed by what people actually eat - they are not into truffles and foie gras any more."

Fortunately, there is a corner of W14 where they can still eat like kings and keep their bank managers happy.