Phone: (09) 551 1000
Cuisine: South Indian
Rating: 7/10
Indian food. Is it too harsh to say that it hardly sets the world on fire these days, such are the number of mediocre choices for this cuisine in our city? Yet it seems like only yesterday that a friend was raving to me about a tiny, informal Indian restaurant he'd discovered in Hobson St that was dazzlingly different with "food so fresh and zingy, with none of the usual overload of creamy gravies".
The restaurant in question was the very first branch of Satya and that conversation took place nearly a decade ago. No sooner had I been given that tip-off - and made it my go-to eatery for when I wanted to impress people with Indian food that was delightfully different, with curries that were lighter than the usual cashew-gravy laden variety we'd become tired of - than they had to vacate their premises. Thankfully the owners, Swamy and Padmaja Akuthota, had bigger plans and there are now four different Satya restaurants in Auckland, in Sandringham, Ponsonby, K Rd and their Mt Eden branch, which was the last to open in 2011.
This branch of Satya, situated in an original two-storey historic building, feels slightly more upmarket than the rest but still the decor is neither here nor there and that's okay, that's not what you come for. It's the food.
I don't muck around when it comes to ordering Indian food - the leftovers are always a treat - so even though we were only two, over-ordering was obligatory to sample a range of dishes. The menu was daunting though, and our hunger threatened to take over, so I ordered a snack to start: dahi puri. These two little words bring the most amount of pleasure you can imagine to begin a meal with.