Dapur, London WC1: ‘It looks, and smells, like the real thing’ – restaurant review

Our lunch for two costs 15 quid. Given the freshness of the ingredients, and the vibrancy of the pastes and spices, this is quite the bargain

After 10 years of living in a small seaside town that’s seemingly stuck forever in the stiff aspic of the 1970s, I’ve never lost my love for big cities. If anything, it has intensified: their scale, their state of constant flux, their sheer unknowability. Turn any corner to meet small excitements, perhaps the chance to eat something you’ve never eaten before: the happiness of that.

It was turning one particular corner, a tiny dogleg off a central London side street, that led me to Dapur (it means “kitchen” in Malaysian). I found it on my way to Novelty Automation, an odd little “arcade” filled with hilarious, vaguely creepy, coin-operated automata (The Chiropodist, Alien Probe). After walking past The Dolphin Tavern, with its clock permanently stopped at the time the first Zeppelin bomb landed on top of it, I spied a hidden courtyard of brightly coloured chairs and a queue snaking out of a small cafe. A queue? For somewhere unreviewed, unblogged, barely even Yelped? How was this even possible?

Related: Padella, London SE1: ‘I hoover up wriggly worms of pici pasta like a deranged cuckoo’ – restaurant review