Restaurant review: Stovell's, Surrey

125 Windsor Road, Chobham, Surrey (01276 858 000). Meal for two, including wine and service: £120

Surrey needs Stovell's. It needs a few other things besides – charm, wit, a reality check – but Stovell's is far more than just a good start. It's an outpost of civilisation, a place for sensible cooking which doesn't take itself too seriously. Lurking deep below its vaguely proper demeanour, its tightly laced corsets, there's also an instinct for the dirtier, baser things in food.

The room may be all Farrow & Ball beige walls. It may be all crisp linen and tasteful paintings of mushrooms and very lovely ceramics. But there is also, sitting in the middle of that room, a whole leg of Pata Negra ham, the fat glistening, the meat the colour of a box at the opera. There's a little pot of lamb dripping that comes alongside their (very good) breads as an alternative to the soft, salty smoked butter. There is a note in the menu about the prehistoric joys of cooking over wood. If there is a criticism it is that this interest in a grubbier kind of food feels a little overwhelmed at the moment by the demands of local polite society.

Perhaps it's the Surrey effect. Blimey, but it's an odd place. I don't mean this as an insult to all the interesting, forward-thinking, lovely liberal people who live there. It's all the other ones, the miserable sods who live surrounded by manicured lawns and carriage-drive garlanded houses, who drive four-by-fours and their nannies to distraction. The ones who have all that money and carefully calibrated taste, and yet for the life of them can't support an interesting crop of restaurants. There's Drake's at Ripley and a handful of gastro pubs, all of them perming a menu from goat's cheese, risotto, sea bass, pork belly, chocolate fondants and lemon tarts. The offering is staggeringly dull. And I know, because I spent days researching it, until I fell asleep face down on the keyboard, dribbling. I still have the space bar mark on my cheek.

Stovell's, which opened in its current incarnation in September, is not boring. It is run by Fernando and Kirsty Stovell, who met at Westminster Catering College in 1997 and have since worked their way around many of the London restaurant world's Stations of the Cross. They know what they're doing, and it shows. A shot glass of hot sweet borscht with a foaming horseradish sauce on top is earth and field and a little bit of fire. A starter of quail brings the legs half boned so you can strip them with your teeth, alongside the crown, the whole grilled over cherry wood so it still has the slight tang and sweat of bonfire. The filling in a single fat ravioli of crab and crayfish is a little soft. But the pasta is impressively thin and the bouillabaisse broth around it has the bravado and energy of a huge church bell, a flavour with a massive echo of long-roasted shellfish.

A deconstructed beef wellington, the fillet rested atop a puff-pastry case full of sautéed mushrooms, with an oxtail jus and a tiny quenelle of liver pâté, was a smart idea. Truffle mash was a little light on yer actual truffles but gets plus points for being mashed potato rather than a slop of butter with a few starch granules thrown in for effect. Black leg chicken came two ways, both braised and roasted, with still-crunchy root vegetables and a sticky chicken jus that had me running a finger around the plate.

Desserts do the thing. They pretend to be classy and grown-up while they're really straight from the nursery. There was a soft-poached meringue miraculously fitted with a crisp tuile hat along with a bright plum sorbet; a banana tart tatin was all crisp pastry and caramel and candied pine nuts and… oh my! Three courses cost £38 though there is an attractive-looking set lunch at £19.50. The wine list has a short but interesting set of choices by the glass and half bottle, and the coffee comes strong and hot.

Quite simply put, Stovell's is a jolly good place to go eat. And in Surrey that's not something you can say often.