12-16 Blenheim Grove, London SE5 (020 7639 1106 – no bookings). Meal for two, with wine £70
If you approach this restaurant from the west you might dismiss it as merely a part of the gentrified corner of Peckham through which you pass to get there. It's known, rather cutely, as Bellenden Village, a term which makes some locals roll their eyes. Childish sorts might point out that the title has both the words "bell" and "end" in it; I shall not.
However, carry on west from the door of the Peckham Refreshment Rooms – named after a local hostelry, now long gone – and you quickly realise you aren't in some gussied-up version of Peckham but in the real thing. Here are rows of Afro-Caribbean hairdressers bubbling with laughter and the ricochet and crack of gossip. Beyond that is Rye Lane. It's a vivid, scuffed place of saturated colours where normal everyday life is a spectator sport.
The point? This is a good restaurant where you would least expect to find it. The fact that it is here is proof both that the no-go areas for good taste are in retreat, and that in the patchwork quilt of London, poverty and surplus can sit side by side. It just needs to be unshowy, which this place is. In the evenings it is rammed, and diners are certainly not coming for a nice sitdown. The restaurant may be many things, but comfortable is not one of them. All seating is at high counters or the bar, on blunt stools which demand long legs. It looks like it was kitted out by crashing an Ikea charge card. Clearly they are coming for the food, which is simple and well-priced.
The cooking is upper-class British holiday-home chic: half a measure faux-rustic French, a third faux-rustic Italian, the occasional outbreak of dirty Spanish, and that hazy thing called modern British. It is big-boned food, with a sense of its own good looks. We sit at the counter, watching the bustle of the kitchen, and order Bayonne ham, which we can see hanging from the wall awaiting the slicer, the fat warming nicely. It comes with a celeriac remoulade which is all crunch and mustard. From the specials there is a fiercely heated cast-iron bowl, bubbling with butter and garlic and spring onions and three fat king prawns. We add a good sprinkle of salt, eat the prawns, suck their heads and then mop furiously with sourdough bread.
Small dishes are around £6, the bigger dishes rarely more than £10, and there aren't many of either. Duck confit has crisp skin and has been cooked by someone who knows that the only thing it understands is serious heat. What makes this dish sing is the carrots underneath. Nothing much has been done to them, if you don't count the liberal application of duck fat (which is a lot). They just taste gloriously of themselves. There is a plate of Bourgogne snails, filled into their shells with garlic butter. Again they need a little more salt, but as the good flaky stuff is in a dish by your hand, who's complaining? The snails and their ponds of melted butter are what that sourdough was destined for. A slab of bavette, that steak which rewards those who look after their teeth, is served with a roasted marrowbone, the contents of which have been mixed with heavy-duty breadcrumbs and butter. The heart sighs even as the arteries harden.
We share a lemon posset for dessert, the execution of which is bettered only by the shortbread biscuits alongside. The wine list is admirably concise – half a dozen whites and reds – and drawn from the same parts of the old world as the food. All are available in glass, carafe and bottle. The service, from bright-eyed young people who know they are part of something they will not forget, is engaged and efficient. And that is all you need to know, save that it will now be even busier and I will be blamed, which is unfair – it's not my fault the place I went for dinner in Peckham one Friday evening is so good. Though I grant you that the mere fact I could do so is noteworthy.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1
