Remembering Satya

One year ago today, we visited Satya Eastern Kitchen, a fast casual pan-Asian place in our area. It had only been open a short time when we visited (with our opening discount coupon that we got in the mail), but the place didn't even last a year. Before they arrived, we had been hopeful that they would fill the fast casual Asian niche for us, but considering we only went there once before they closed, that clearly didn't happen.

Satya had really nice decor. Wooden tables and benches, lots of tiled and mosaic artwork on all of the walls. It was a very pretty space. Good ambiance for a fast casual place, except that they were really close to Times Square which brought in lots of loud people and surrounding traffic.

We started our meal with a "small plate" of blistered shishito peppers (Japanese sweet peppers with coarse sea salt) for $3.95.

These weren't bad, but it's hard to mess up grilling peppers like this. But for $4, it wasn't a lot of food. (This is a common theme throughout our Satya experience.)

A got the chicken satay "big plate" which came with 3 skewers of chicken and 2 sides for $10. He picked brown rice and the sauteed mushrooms & spinach. He had a really unhealthy lunch that day (lots of pizza) so he decided to go for a healthy and clean dinner.

The chicken satay was nicely flavored and was probably our favorite thing we ate that day. The peanut sauce was lighter and thinner than what we usually see with satay, but it's probably healthier that way. The sides were basic, but also very healthy. This is the type of clean and healthy dinner that we love to get, but for $10, it's not a lot of food. Also, we could probably make this at home for far less if we had a grill.

I went with the Satya sliders, which were $10.50. The order came with 3 sliders - burgers with lettuce, Roma tomatoes, cheese and Asian aioli on brioche slider rolls - with a side of crispy seaweed and lotus root chips.

A liked the crispy seaweed more than I did, but we both liked the lotus root chips. Although they were tasty and crunchy, they weren't a very substantial side dish. The sliders were pretty good burgers as well, but again, 3 sliders isn't a whole lot of food. They were not big at all.

The food at Satya wasn't bad, but the biggest issue for us was the price. Understandably, based on their location, their rents were probably high and they passed that price on to consumers, but it's a little hard to pay so much and still leave hungry. Without the discount, what we got was close to $30. To compare to other fast casual places, you could get 3 bowls at Chipotle for what we paid (less, actually) and be completely stuffed. We never made it back to Satya because there were always other options that were better at the time, but it's kind of sad that the concept didn't make it. Would have been nice to have a good fast casual Asian spot. Guess we'll have to wait for ShopHouse.