If you are looking for some cosmopolitan cuisine New Addington's the place to go, according to a Royal Mail survey.

Surprisingly the estate, which has been accused of being the home of nothing but junk and fast food, has got more food outlets and eateries than anywhere outside the West End.

The Royal Mail carried out its survey ahead of the release of a set of food-related souvenir stamps yesterday. (Tuesday) The company studied food outlets, which includes grocers, supermarkets and general stores, and restaurants in 2,868 postcodes to find out the number of places where people could buy the delights shown on the six Changing Tastes stamps tea, rice, sushi, pasta, chips and apples.

The survey found that London's West End, the W1 area, was the hands down winner with 261 cafes, Italian, Japanese and Indian eateries, grocers and chippies. But New Addington came in second with 120 outlets, beating the seaside resorts of Brighton and Blackpool and Huddersfield town centre.

The Royal Mail's analysis showed there were 38 grocers, 22 cafes, 21 Indian restaurants and takeaways, 20 chippies and 19 places which served Italian food in the CR0 postcode, which was used as the basis for the research. The only cuisine missing was Japanese.

It is not clear if the survey covered parts of Croydon outside of New Addington.

Mark Nicholls, owner of greengrocers Market Gardens in Central Parade, said there are plenty of places to get good and healthy grub.

"During the summer months we sell a lot strawberries and peaches. But if you were talking about the whole year bananas are our top seller."

Carmel Hopper, manager of Bangers and Mash in Calley Down Crescent, which has been based in New Addington for 10 years, said they served a variety of dishes every day. But she was surprised to hear there were so many chippies, saying: "I only know there's about three or four in New Addington.