Chapter Two, Blackheath Village, London, SE3

The good folk of Blackheath are spoilt for choice and the last thing they need is another top-notch restaurant. So what will they do with Chapter Two?

The rotten sods who live in Blackheath must cackle every time they read a restaurant critic gushing with praise for yet another 100-quid-a-head central London designer diner. When they feel like Chinese, there is the Laughing Buddha; for Indian, the taste of the Raj; for Greek, the Village Taverna and Troy's; and for Italian, Bella Vista and Tony Allan's year-old Loco flagship. There is also a modern microbrewery (Zero Degrees), two popular Thai restaurants (Ratchada and Laicram), two Spanish (Mar e Terra and El Pirata), a Portuguese (Villa Moura) and a Mexican (the Cactus Pit). And all are doing good business on a Wednesday evening under a grumpy sky. Don't these people ever eat at home?

The rotten sods who live in Blackheath must cackle every time they read a restaurant critic gushing with praise for yet another 100-quid-a-head central London designer diner. When they feel like Chinese, there is the Laughing Buddha; for Indian, the taste of the Raj; for Greek, the Village Taverna and Troy's; and for Italian, Bella Vista and Tony Allan's year-old Loco flagship. There is also a modern microbrewery (Zero Degrees), two popular Thai restaurants (Ratchada and Laicram), two Spanish (Mar e Terra and El Pirata), a Portuguese (Villa Moura) and a Mexican (the Cactus Pit). And all are doing good business on a Wednesday evening under a grumpy sky. Don't these people ever eat at home?

Well, yes, they do that, too. There are two good butchers in Blackheath Village, including Rick Stein food hero, GG Sparkes, two specialist chocolate shops, a well-stocked gourmet deli and a Sunday farmer's market in the station carpark.

When they do eat out, all they talk about is what they are going to cook at home, if my admittedly small sample at the next table at Chapter Two is anything to go by. "Let's pick up an organic chicken for Sunday," says she, taking a mouthful of sea bass. "Mmm," responds he, surveying his roast breast of barbary duck with confit beetroot. "And let's make ice-cream."

This smart, moodily lit restaurant on the edge of the heath has been the big night out choice in the gastronomic cul de sac of Blackheath for some time. Yet it has been living somewhat in the shadow of its big sister, Chapter One in Locksbottom near Bromley, where the highly formed, richly flavoured cooking of Andrew McLeish has pulled in both a Michelin star and the AA Restaurant of the Year Award for 2003/4.

Now, with the recent appointment of Trevor Tobin as chef, Chapter Two is rewriting itself. For the past four years Tobin has been cooking with Hywel Jones at the leafy Foliage at the Mandarin Oriental hotel, Lola's in Islington and Pharmacy in Notting Hill. Tobin's "elegant comfort food" translates as a very come-hither set-price menu. Mid-week, £16.95 for two courses looks dramatic value when the courses are such things as butternut-squash velouté with blue cheese and red-onion croquante, and slow roast pork belly with ham hock boudin and pan-fried foie gras.

Divided into ground floor and basement dining rooms with a café-cum-smoking-lounge attached, Chapter Two is a civilised space, with its discreet décor, double-clothed, widely spaced tables, and polished and attentive service. Tables are set with some extremely nice Luques olives, and fine bread rolls are proffered. My fellow diners look relaxed and regular in every sense of the word. Downright smug, in fact.

It is good to see a menu so responsive to the change of seasons. Spring is definitely in the air with a salmon and cucumber salad topped with a hip bath of beetroot tortelloni filled with a light horseradish foam. This is a cracker of a dish, the salmon lush and oily, the cucumber soft-crunchy, and the foam cleverly spilling through the cut tortelloni to pull it all together.

Also spring-like is a raviolo of crab; a ball of fresh, sweet crab meat held together in a skin of parchment-thin pasta, topped with neat splurt of white-onion purée and served in a rich, bisquey red-mullet broth. I remember this dish being popular in the mad heights of the early 1990s, but do not recall eating a finer example.

The French-driven wine list represents less of a bargain than the menu, with very few reds under £20. Even a clean, easy-going Bouchard 98 Côte de Beaune is £29, and a few more choices by the glass would not go astray.

The promise of "elegant comfort food" is fulfilled by the main courses. Roasted salt cod, the fish freshly salted as opposed to preserved, is a dramatic vertical plug of fish with a crisp, seared golden top, sitting on a little spill of lentil froth, with double-shelled broad beans, wilted cos lettuce and a lava flow of bacon-studded champ lurking at its base. Clever, and lovely to eat.

A pot-roast Landes chicken sounds both elegant and comforting, and the accessories of buttery sweet potato fondant, creamy leeks, chopped savoy cabbage and pancetta, and zingy red onion confit are certainly that. But to pot-roast a breast is to dumb-down this noble technique - designed for large pieces of meat and whole birds - to the point of meaninglessness. It is no surprise, then, that the meat is tight.

Desserts, so often the Alton Towers of British dining, show restraint and skill. A cocoa-dusted, praline-crunchy cone of walnut parfait is well-matched with poached pear and pear sorbet. Meanwhile, a warm, caramelised baby banana reclines on a layered sarcophagus of creamy, rich honeycomb and chocolate. Bananas do not thrill me at dessert time, but this one has escaped the playground lunchbox. A tiny lemon tart on the petit fours platter is a miracle of thinly contained acidity.

Chapter Two manages to be a thoroughly professional, extremely likeable restaurant of such good value it deserves a far wider catchment area than SE3. A gifted chef, Tobin is yet another reason for Blackheathens to eat out. Bastards.

16 Chapter Two 43 Montpelier Vale, Blackheath Village, London SE3, tel: 020 8333 2666. Open daily. Three-course dinner, £23.50 Fri and Sat, £19.95 Sun to Thurs, plus wine and service

Scores 1-9 stay home and cook 10-11 needs help 12 ok 13 pleasant enough 14 good 15 very good 16 capable of greatness 17 special, can't wait to go back 18 highly honourable 19 unique and memorable 20 as good as it gets

Second helpings: Other number twos

Riverside Brasserie Monkey Island Lane, Bray, Berkshire, tel: 01628 780 553 Heston Blumenthal may be co-owner of this pleasant, informal restaurant on the Bray Marina, but do not expect the same sort of kitchen wizardry that you will find at his three-starred Fat Duck. His hand is evident, however, in the masterly rib-eye steak with thrice-cooked chips and marrowbone sauce, and braised belly pork with chorizo and botifarra sausages.

Novelli in the City The Capital Club, 15 Abchurch Lane, London EC4, tel: 020 7717 0088 Jean-Christophe Novelli is on the expansionist trail once again. Having established himself as the chef patron and directeur des cuisines at the exclusive Auberge du Lac restaurant in Berkshire, he recently set up in the lower floor of the swish Capital Club. The restaurant is open to hoi polloi for dinner Monday to Friday, for turbot in coconut milk and oven-braised liquorice oxtail.

Michael Caines at the Bristol Marriott Royal College Green, Bristol, tel: 0117 910 5309 Being the renowned chef of Gidleigh Park in Devon is not enough for Michael Caines, who also runs two restaurants of his own, at Exeter's Royal Clarence and, now, in Bristol. The opulent dining-room with its stained-glass ceiling is littered with statues, and the food, under head chef Shane Goodway, is equally splendid, from the roast loin of Exmoor venison to the prune and ginger soufflé.

E-mail Terry Durack about where you've eaten lately at t.durack@independent.co.uk