Satay House Paddington

In search of a break from the luxuries of Mayfair, Mr Oil and Mr Vinegar wandered up the Edgware Road and turned left to visit Satay House, one of London’s relatively few Malaysian restaurants.

MrO: It’s a long time since I wandered around at night in Paddington.
MrV: I doubt that very much. Anyway, this isn’t really Paddington – not enough hotels where you can rent rooms by the hour.
MrO: That would be your speciality, not mine.
MrV: What on earth possessed you to drag us through the midst all those Middle Eastern bong houses on the Edgware Road.
MrO: They are called hookah lounges and I felt the walk would do us good. And their aroma was delightful.
MrV: I don’t call it delightful, sitting outside in the freezing cold smoking raspberries through a bong.
MrO: Well they were all enjoying themselves, and that’s the important thing. Rather like all the people at Satay House appeared to be. It was a very jolly collection, all well-mannered people, plenty of them Asian…
MrV: …Always a good sign in an Asian restaurant. Although I thought that child might ruin our evening by talking loudly – until it started singing. Heavenly. Almost made me like children.
MrO: It is very much a family place – the same family have been running it for nearly 40 years.
MrV: It is also a tiny place – probably can’t manage more than 30 covers, and that would be a squeeze. And yet they manage to turn out some very fine food.
MrO: It was interesting to compare the food to the stuff we had a few days earlier at Patara, which is part of a very successful chain and probably has a much grander kitchen. I know Malaysian food is different from Thai in many ways but Malaysia is such a melting pot of different influences that there are some direct comparisons to be made.
MrV: The satay sauce was to my mind better than Patara’s and much closer to the satay at Bangkok in South Kensington, which has the best I know in Britain.
MrO: Satay of course was not a Thai dish. It originated in Indonesia and everyone else in the region adopted it. I think our other starter, Ikan Bilis and Kacang, is also originally from Indonesia.
MrV: That was outstanding – so simple and delicious.
MrO: All they do is fry some chilli, crispy anchovies and peanuts in a sweetened oil. Apparently it goes with all sort of things.
MrV: I could eat it every day.
MrO: How do you reckon Satay House fared with your rule that the main courses in Asian restaurants never live up to the starters?
MrV: For the first time, I think, that rule was broken. The two main courses were faultless. I cannot choose between the king prawns fried in ground shrimp and hot chillis, or the beef rendang.
MrO: Rendang is yet another Indonesian dish. The Indonesians seem to be responsible for the much of the best Far Eastern food but they don’t have many restaurants in London to show off their talents. I wonder why?
MrV: Perhaps because there’s no need – the Thais, the Vietnamese and particularly the Malaysians have pinched their best dishes and now serve them up to us as their own.
MrO: I suppose London is quite similar to Malaysia in that way, cherry-picking the best of all the cultures that come its way.
MrV: Oh god, you’re getting philosophical. Anyway, the vegetable dish was very good – stir-fried morning glory. That phrase has come to mean something else in recent years but it was originally given to this Chinese vegetable because of its extraordinary laxative qualities.
MrO: Trust you to know that. How was your pudding?
MrV: Quite comical the way they spell it “ais krim” on the menu – a perfect example of them taking something foreign and doing it their own way. The cinnamon ice cream was sensational – beautifully creamy and flavourful.
MrO: I thought that viognier was quite good value at £23.50 a bottle.
MrV: So did I, but checking the receipt it seems they only charged us £22 a bottle. Perhaps it was slightly different to the one listed, but I didn’t notice.
MrO: I’m surprised you noticed anything, considering that you’d had drinks before, a vodka-and-tonic when you got there and then drank most of the wine yourself.

Mr Oil and Mr Vinegar ate one serving of prawn crackers, two starters, two main courses and one pudding, accompanied by one vodka-and-tonic, two bottles of white wine and two bottles of water, for a remarkable total outlay of £115.88.

Satay House
13 Sale Place
London
W2 1PX

+44 (0)207 723 6763

info@satay-house.co.uk
http://www.satay-house.co.uk