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Skewering bland Chinese food
[Times photos: Carrie Pratt]
The Satay House menu features dishes with Asian influences, such as roast duck on lettuce, front, a selection of satays on skewers, left, and roti canai, pancakes that are a Malaysian favorite. |
By CHRIS SHERMAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published June 20, 2002
Satay House may resemble a stock Chinese place, but go inside and experience innovative Asian home cooking.
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After a lifetime in the restaurant business, Janet Lee doesn't know when to quit. And that's a good thing, as anyone who has tasted the salt-and-pepper prawns or dunked a rice cube into the peanut sauce at the Satay House will agree.
Those who haven't been inside this fresh, clean space across from Orange Blossom Groves may presume it is just one of the many small family Chinese restaurants in mid Pinellas. It is much more than that, and it is certainly not the stock Chinese with which we have become familiar and sometimes contemptuous.
The Lee family knows Chinese restauranting well. In 1983, Janet Lee started Palace of the Orient on Park Boulevard, which may be the only place General Tso's chicken comes with a view of the lake. Ten years ago, she turned it over to her son and son-in-law and focused her attention on tending Tung Fong, a tidy grocery stocked with everything from bitter melon to the conical bamboo steamers of Laos.
Clearly that wasn't enough, and two months ago she opened her dream restaurant next door with 40 seats, simply and efficiently designed from dining room to stainless steel kitchen for easy operation and maintenance.
Owner Janet Lee, right, with sister Shirley Loke, who cooks at the family restaurant.
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The true dream was to do something different, to share a menu of her home cooking. And what a fascinating and flavorful home she has.
As the restaurant's name implies, the signature specialty is the satays, which we know mostly from Thailand (and Bennigan's) but which are truly the pride of Malaysia. And that country is one of the more diverse ethnic stir fries in Asia, a sweet and spicy crossroads of cuisines, and Lee's menu is just as expansive.
Besides the curry flavors of India, the noodles of Singapore and the sweetness of Thai cooking, there are rare samples of two great Chinese traditions, Hainanese and, my favorite, Hakka cooking.
Yet Lee presents them plainly as Asian cuisine, without the hype of the slicker adaptations of Pacific Rim, Pan-Asian or coastal fusion. There's no sexy tableware or snappy uniforms. Leave that (and the high prices) to the chain wanna-bes. The place is simple and spare; the only flash is in the framed photos of Asian fruits.
The innovation is in the food, which is decidedly different, yet warm and sweet enough to comfort more than shock. So let's relax and fill the table.
You have to start with satay, small skewers that make you understand why a hibachi may be all the grill you need. At Satay House they can be a shared snack, appetizers or a light meal, and made with beef, chicken, shrimp or tofu. (I wish they included lamb, a favorite in much of Asia). Of the four, the chicken marinated in curry sauce is best, but all combine happily with the house peanut sauce.
The best part of the satay plate is the pile of rice cubes. Of all varieties of rice cooking, this is the most fun: cooked rice compressed into tight, moist cubes, like sugar, not as sweet but just as deadly to the low-carb crowd. They also come with cucumbers, onions and carrots in vinegar, but I'd like them sharper and in a bigger bowl.
Though crab Rangoon is well-known, there's more distinctive stuff for starters, such as curry rolls stuffed with potatoes and chicken; salads of cabbage, pickle, sesame and peanuts; and the pancakes called roti canai. The pancakes resemble Indian breads, yet with the buttery layers of a French pastry, and they are a Malaysian favorite.
Though you can stick to traditional chicken and duck dishes and simple curries, you also can step lightly in this corner of Southeast Asia with chow mei fun, the well-known noodles of Singapore. These are stir-fried noodles with all the goodies you'd find in fried rice -- ham, shrimp and such -- but with a telltale hint of curry.
I couldn't resist more exotic choices. The Hakka pork and yam, sandwiched together in a parfait of a meatloaf and flavored with star anise, was as hearty and rich as any farmhouse holiday meal. A clay pot of beef and lettuce, however, was too sweet; I was expecting more salt.
No problem with salt-and-pepper prawns. They're usually a treat, and Satay House's were more than that with a dozen big shrimp butterflied and dipped in transparent egg batter to produce exceptionally crisp shrimp.
My only real disappointment was curry laksa, a Malaysian noodle dish with fish cakes, chicken and tofu. Perhaps I should have ordered it hot. At medium, it was one of those bland dishes where the tofu is the good part. That didn't discourage me. Satay has a hot sauce thick with chili oil for extra fire.
In any case, we wound up with too much on the table while wanting to try more: Hainan chicken and cucumbers, nasi lemak with coconut milk and fried anchovies, shrimp sambal, a yam bird's nest of seafood.
There is more Satay House can and will offer. For now, the seafood selection is modest. It doesn't have a license for beer or wine, and the spicing is restrained. But all that will change.
Already, for anyone who wants more flavor from Asia, the cooking at Satay House provides a warm, friendly home.
Satay House
- 5731 Seminole Blvd., Seminole
- (727) 399-8395 Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday-Saturday; 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday.
- Reservations: Suggested
- Details: Most credit cards accepted; wheelchair access good; no smoking; takeout available. Customers may bring beer or wine.
- Prices: $5 to $15.95
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