I went Satowa Hokkaido Cuisine for lunch a few days ago. Satowa is actually conveniently located in the central business district, but that is an area that I rarely venture to, so I wouldn’t have ever discover Satowa if not for its advertisement in O-plus magazine. I later found out they have been around for quite sometime and I’m suspecting that the savvy working professional around that area have been keeping mum about this great place, hoping that as few people knows about it as possible so that no-one will steal the limited seats away from them.
And they certainly have a good reason to do so, because Satowa’s 4-course lunch set at $20 is certainly one of the best values around town. Not to mention, the food actually taste great.
The lunch set wasn’t any miserly put together stuff. The appetizer I had came in a platter of 3 items which include a Wakame & Cucumber Sunomono that really whets appetite, a warm and smooth chawan-mushi that came loaded with shimeji mushroom, prawn and edamame and there is also a fried potato ball that was stuffed with minced chicken and mushroom. Just from the appetizer, you can tell the effort in putting the food together. The second course was salad. And again unlike the typical “set lunch” salad, theirs was a mixed green (not iceberg) tossed with a creamy spicy dressing and a huge scoop of home-made potato salad. The smooth potato salad had chunks of crunchy apples and cucumber mixed in for a contrast of texture. How thoughtful!
Main course was selected from a list of 6-8 choices. I tried the Yorkshire Pork Tonkatsu and the home-made (not from the instant roux that 95% of Japanese restaurants use) seafood curry loaded with prawns and scallops. Both are their house-specialties and were great choices and the portions were huge. The main course also came with miso soup loaded with vegetables and salmon. It was unbelievable for the price I paid.
The only thing I didn’t like was the peach sorbet. Guess their food cost busted with the prior theree courses. The sorbet tasted like it made from canned peach. But it didn’t really matter much. I was already totally stuffed by then.
And If you see their ads in O-plus, it is really interesting, it says: “Home-made Hokkaido meal, taking time to cook, no MSG, healthy and kind to your body”. It’s really hard to find a chef that cook with his soul these days; I really appreciate this and I hope Satowa is here to stay.
Satowa Hokkaido Cuisine
3 Pickering Street #01-44 Nankin Row
Tel: 6534-9882
