Satay House

My Malaysian colleague recommended this place as the best Malaysian place around, so I was very excited. Their menu looked really good too.

Food

We started with the obligatory Soya Bean (£2.10), which came with too much ice, so tasted quite watery. It was good though, to cut through the heat that actually came with the dishes. Daging Goreng Berlada (£7.50) - Stir-fried beef in fresh ground shrimp and hot chillies was a dry sauce, with loads of chilli hit, and lots of flavour. Pajeri Terong (£5.40) - Mild and sweet aubergine curry had a sweeter sauce, and softly sautéed eggplant, but just too much oil for it to be very enjoyable. We ordered Roti Canai Plain (£4.00) - Home-made traditional bread, with side of dalca instead of rice to mop up the sauce, but the dalca sauce itself was a nice enough accompaniment. The actually roti itself, doesn’t live up to the standard of Awana. The Nasi Goreng (£5.90) - Stir-fried rice with shredded beef, shrimp, egg & mixed vegetables was ordered instead of the quite expensive plain rice (£2 p.p), which had too much flavour in itself to be used as an accompaniment to any of the sauces. The wok taste was missing, and I didn’t really detect the egg, but there was nice heat and a good amount of beef and shrimp to make this satisfying enough.

I definitely didn’t need dessert after that meal, but Slokky couldn’t resist the Sago Gula Melaka (£4.40) - Steamed tapioca seed pudding, drenched in palm sugar & coconut milk. I only had a few small bites, but I was not impressed. This was like a twist to your typical tapioca soup, but presented in pudding form. This meant that not all the tapioca had time to absorb and soak up the sauce…besides, the sauce was way too sweet for my liking.

Rating - 6.5

Atmosphere

I was surprised this place was so full on a rainy Thursday night. Maybe they are lacking this kind of restaurant. Filled mainly with couples and friends, I was happy to see a few Asian faces as well. As far as the space is concerned, it’s situated in a small terrace house, with a lower basement level reached by very narrow stairs. Furniture and décor is of the Ikea variety. They don’t take your coat or anything, and the space was very cramped.

Rating - 1.5

Service

For some reason, this place was run by Italians, and was full of Italian waiters and diners. The waiters were ok, a bit too slow for my liking, but very friendly.

Rating - 2.5

C-factor

About on par for Malaysian places.

Rating - 1

Brownie Points - 11.5

Info

13 Sale place
London
W2 1PX
Phone +44 (0) 20 7723 6763
Website