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 Nick Dent takes part in a bold experiment in Asian-Western fusion.
Situated near the Cleveland Street corner of Elizabeth Street, Sam Satay is something of a two-for-one deal. Open daily 10am-10pm, the sheltered outdoor café serves traditional Malaysian hawker food. Here you can get a sensational nasi lemak (try it – it’s the new pad thai); a rich, jam-packed chicken laksa; or an onion, chilli and egg-filled roti telor bawang pancake. And you can expect to pay not very much for it. If you haven’t been getting into classic Malaysian, now’s the time to start, and Sam Satay Café is the place to do it.
But Sam Satay (it’s named after co-owner and chef Sam Yunus) has its eye on a bigger and altogether riskier game. By night, the adjoining BYO restaurant opens its doors, offering pricier, modern-style Malaysian in a chic ambiance of rattan chairs, soft lighting and crisp white linen.
The evening we showed up, there were maybe 10 diners in a room that looks like it could hold a hundred. They’re going to have to generate a lot of business to make this place look full.
An entrée of cucur udang ($12) offered two grilled, lightly battered king prawns and three mildly spiced prawn dumplings, with sweet chilli sauce to dip them in. The prawns were ocean fresh, and the dumpling batter was thick and hearty; this was basically good hawker food.
My main – earnestly recommended to me by a waiter – was a bit of a puzzler though. Steak randang ($25) offered a pub-standard bit of sirloin piled on top of undercooked julienned veggies and a mound of roti bread, then drowned in thick, spicy randang sauce.
I like the coconut-sweetness of randang sauce, but thought it jarred with the flavour of good old-fashioned steak (which incidentally had an unpleasantly large rind of fat on it). Maybe it’s just me, but shouldn’t the beef be cooked in the curry to really work as a curry? As for the roti, it tasted great, but seemed sad and squashed underneath the meat, when half the fun of roti is its proud, erect fluffiness. Here, they’ve used it as a substitute for mash, which is rather like hiring Rembrandt to paint your shed.
A glance down the menu reveals that lamb cutlets, rib-eye and spatchcock also get the curry sauce treatment.
However, an ikkan assam pedas ($29) – grilled salmon fillet – proved a slightly better match for its spicy assam sauce, and its accompanying tempura eggplant and okra were flavoursome.
I can see a lot of potential Sam Satay Restaurant. They have a lovely room, friendly and efficient staff, and a firm handle on the Malaysian classics. On my return visit, though, I’ll steer clear of their Asian-western mash-ups.
Sam Satay Restaurant
504 Elizabeth Street
Surry Hills
Tel: (02) 9698 8558
www.samsatay.com
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