Restaurants in suburbia are on the up

The South-east has long been considered an affluent area, yet decent restaurants are few and far between. Fiona Sims finds that the tide may well be turning

Jonathan Coomb is excited. He's just heard that he's won Harden's overall trophy in its annual Rémy Martin-sponsored restaurant awards. It's a big deal on many levels - but partly because it's in Reigate, on a busy, less-than-chic corner just off the main drag. Traditionally, Reigate doesn't do award-winning restaurants.

OK, so Tony Tobin's Dining Room is also there in all its glory, but rosettes and accolades? Not so much. And I could paint you the same picture all the way to Greenwich. Yup, if you live in the south and south-eastern outer reaches of the capital (as I do), then you're pretty stuck for decent nosh - until now, that is. Coomb is just the start of it.

The Westerly opened in January this year and has been buzzing ever since. This isn't the first time Coomb has been noticed. Before the Westerly he ran the Stephan Langton Inn in Abinger Common, the only pub in Surrey listed in the Good Food Guide and boasting a Michelin Bib Gourmand. He would have stayed there, too, if the landlord hadn't jacked up the rent - but then he got to hear about the site in Reigate.

"I already knew the place. It's only eight miles from the Stephan Langton, so I could keep all my regular customers and pick up some new ones. Plus I'm originally from Reigate," explains Coomb.

Like much of London's fringe, the town is chock-full of chain restaurants. But Reigate has stockbrokers, who would rather eat locally than schlep all the way back up to town if they could, reasons Coomb. Not to mention the potential custom from local businesses.

He's cranked the food up a few notches too. "It's become more precise, more refined," he says. Dishes include roast cod, braised octopus, red wine, gnocchi and peas (£14.50) and croquette of pig's head and sauce gribiche (£5.50). The latter is going down particularly well. "There's a lot of old school round here - they love that kind of thing," says Coomb. What doesn't work in Surrey that would work in the heart of the capital? "Opaque fish - we can't get away with that," he laughs.

Obscure corners

The wine list is a surprise, too - packed with plenty of quirky little numbers from obscure corners by little-known growers (put together by Guildford-based Les Caves de Pyrene), and sold by Coomb's wife Cynthia. "They love it. People trust us so it's not difficult to sell these wines," says Coomb. "My customers are used to eating up in town so they expect a similar experience when they eat out here," he continues. Jay Rayner's review in the Observer in May helped some, too. "There was quite a lot of excitement about it, which surprised me," he says. "Reigate is hardly a hotbed of Observer readers."

So what took him so long? "Rents around here are very similar to central London - the expense puts people off," says Coomb. "If you look at the Good Food Guide, Surrey gets only nine entries, while there are 25 in Gloucestershire - there's not a single entry in Guildford. The industry needs to take the plunge a bit more." Though Coomb reckons it's essential to get good PR: he uses Chris Horton at Victus.

Mark van der Goot had no idea things would get this busy. The Rosendale in West Dulwich was doing 1,000 covers in its first week when he opened in July and things haven't quietened down any since. Not that he's grumbling. He's just picked up Time Out‘s Gastropub of the Year award, pipping Gordon Ramsay's the Narrow to the post. "Who would have thought I would upstage Gordon Ramsay?" he grins.

I drive past the Rosendale regularly. Until Van der Goot got his hands on it, it was an edgy boozer in south London. It was on Van der Goot's regular route, too - on his way to the Greyhound, his first gastropub in Battersea High Street, which has picked up a bunch of awards itself, notably for its wine list - staggering, at 600 bins and counting. But with the Rosendale's proximity to the smart homes of West Dulwich and its huge capacity, he could immediately see the site's potential.

"It didn't take much persuasion," he says. "Most people around here work in the City and regularly go to nice restaurants for lunch and there's only one or two in south-east London that tick those boxes. And many around here have kids - it's a big effort to go out in the West End for dinner. You have to leave home at 6pm, paying the baby-sitter even more, and add £30 in cab fare. It just doesn't work."

Good catchment area

Van der Goot is so optimistic about opening up in the South-east that he has two more ventures in the pipeline: the Crown in Sundridge Park and the Wheatsheaf in West Wickham. Sundridge Park is Bromley, basically. Van der Goot has lived there for five years now and is fed up that there's still nowhere to go - other than Chapter One, of course, which has been banging a lone drum around these parts for a few years now. "And it's such a good catchment area," he ponders.

He's already got the lease for the Crown - "it would make you cry if I told you how little it was," he laughs - but has shut it completely, as it had a rather dodgy reputation. It's reopening next summer, with 11 boutique-style bedrooms above, another first for the area. He's particularly excited about the cellar. "It's huge - I'm planning a private dining room in there," he tells me.

The Wheatsheaf in West Wickham, though, is still operating. "I've stopped the food offering for the moment - which was standard frozen. I think it's better to do the refurb all in one go," he explains. He'll close next March and reopen two months later with a restaurant and a more informal gastropub dining room offering British classics. "There are plenty of Italian restaurants around here but no one is doing potted shrimps," he says. And yes, all will get a decent wine list with plenty by the glass. "Though 200 bins for West Wickham, rather than 500 - I'm still not convinced on that score," says the former sommelier.

I wasn't convinced about the Perry Hill - a new gastropub in Forest Hill. It certainly looks the part - funky wallpaper, Starck-style lighting, open kitchen. Maybe it was because this was my man's old post-match football hang-out - and as grotty as south London boozers get. Or maybe it was the un-London-like huge portions, and the full three courses that my fellow diners were unfashionably ordering.

That's not to say owners Shaun Wilson and Robbie O'Neill aren't trying - they are, even down to the fancy presentation. My battered fish came perched on a posh mound of pea purée, while the hand-cut chips were stacked Jenga-like alongside. That came after a plate of home ginger and lime-cured salmon, mackerel, smoked eel and crayfish.

But it was Thursday night, and it wasn't exactly heaving, so maybe the demographics weren't quite right? "It's an experiment to some extent," admits Wilson. "We're still getting the measure of it. We haven't fully decided what it will be."

While Wilson is a north London boy - the pair have opened numerous bars and restaurants all over the capital and currently own a couple of bars in Clerkenwell, including the Bear - O'Neill was brought up around Forest Hill, so was initially more confident. "It was the space, really. It's huge and you wouldn't get that for the money in other parts of London. And the houses around here are quite nice. I think they're ready for something like this," Wilson reasons. "I think there's a huge untapped market here. People don't want to always go up to the West End - if only I had £1 for every time a person said that to me."

Expansion programme

There was much excitement when the hoarding on the high street in Beckenham declared the opening of a Gourmet Burger Kitchen. When owner Clapham House Group bought the award-winning burger chain in 2005 it announced a rapid expansion programme of 20 GBKs a year. At the last count there were 32, with 22 sites inside the M25 and 10 outside, with the furthest from the capital in Manchester.

Beckenham GBK opened in the first week of October. The busiest, apparently, is the one in St Paul's, with Brighton, Belsize Park, Windsor and Richmond following close on its heels, along with Beckenham, judging by the initial excitement. The secret of its success? "We offer a bloody good burger," says operations manager Javed Akhtar, who used to work at a pizza joint in Beckenham many moons ago.

So where's next? Croydon? "You never know," he grins.