So Farage has Thanet in his beady sights, dividing the isle as efficiently as a Japanese-bladed knife. With his usual clammy bonhomie, he promises to sprinkle fairydust over an area that contains some of the greatest social deprivation in the UK. We’ll see, eh? There was an infographic kicking around Twitter recently that showed a curious divide: places with high immigration were least inclined to vote Ukip; those with a comparatively low percentage most likely to follow the “pound-shop Enoch Powell”, with the pieces fitting together, rarely overlapping, neat as a jigsaw.

Cliftonville is on the latter part of that map, a forgotten bit of Margate. Once a fashionable Victorian resort, it’s now largely tatty and sad, many of its handsome seafront buildings butchered to become Houses in Multiple Occupation. Immigration is comparatively low here, but poverty and insularity have created a culture that feeds Ukippery.

Now, I’m even less of a political genius than Russell Brand, but I welcome all the new eastern European, African and Indian food shops on the town’s main drag, which was previously infested by rheumy-eyed alkies selling horrible old pine, and the kind of drapers who’d make Are You Being Served? look like Dover Street Market. These days, you can buy anything from exotically pickled vegetables to robust, leathery sausages. Which, to my tunnel-visioned mind, is progress.

Anyway, also on the road is the Riz, promising all the treasures of South Indian and Sri Lankan cooking. Yeah, right. But local wisdom keeps urging me to go, and eventually I cave, albeit reluctantly. It doesn’t have the air of a place about to deliver a gastronomic thrill-ride: for one thing, it’s owned by the Costcutter next door; for another, opaque glass windows blot out the world. “It’s not for people looking in,” the pal whispers. “It’s to stop us looking out.” The LED lighting in the ceiling changes colour frequently, making us look alternatively demonic, on the point of heart failure and green around the gills. Furnishings are white brocade – in a place that serves a wonderfully oily mutton dish honking with black pepper and fennel, that is excellent eccentricity.

But the food, well, it’s mighty fine: unrestrained spicing, delicate frying, glorious bread, marshmallowy rice pancakes – everything that makes the food from the southern part of the subcontinent so bewitching. I love the names so much, too: idli, puttu, varuval, idiappam… it’s like a lullaby sung by Tinky Winky.

There’s an almost challenging pungency to some of it: mutton varuval (the mutton is Kentish, we’re told), a dry-fried meat curry, has the kind of spice kick – not hot, just intense – that has your ears ringing. We order, with a buttery, flaky and pleasingly floppy paratha, a Sri Lankan seeni sambol whose initial sticky-sweet onion jam flavour gives way to something alluringly reeking and murky (dried fish powder, I’d guess). More local produce – Thanet’s ubiquitous cauliflower – is spiced and fried, then glazed with a syrupy, sweet-sour Sino-Indian sauce for gobi Manchurian. The only duffers are kingfish curry, the fish as unyielding as a fossil, and “Madras roast potatoes”, which are over-sweetened with tamarind. And though I love mustard seeds and curry leaves, they put in many repeat appearances.

Best of all are dosas so vast that they overlap their metal trays: huge, lacy tunnels stuffed with potato spiced with mustard seeds and curry leaves (see?), and accessorised with vivid coconut chutneys and a comforting, pulse-thickened sambar, in which bob fibrous little “drumsticks”. The triangular Mysore masala dosa is even bigger, its fermented rice batter bright with red chilli. Tear off a crisp corner, load up with chutneys, dunk into sambar: heaven. Homemade kulfi (mango, pistachio, cardamom) are pretty, pastel palate-soothers.

The room is run with laid-back aplomb by Paul Singh (not himself southern Indian, although the chef is), natty in his mustard cords, tweed waistcoat and debonair ’tache. He tells us he plans to add Goan dishes to the menu, plus a curry made from local octopus. If ever there were a diamond in the rough, the Riz is it. Should the reptilian Ukip leader, on one of his tactical visits, drop by hoping for a good ol’ British Ruby Murray and a nice korma for the wife, I hope Singh will send him packing, back where he came from.

• The Riz, 49 Northdown Road, Margate, Kent, 01843 293698. Open all week, noon-11.30pm. About £15-20 a head, plus drinks and service.

Food 7/10
Atmosphere 5/10
Value for money 9/10

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