Satya South Indian Restaurant and Chai Lounge
17 Great North Road (Restaurant); 515 Sandringham Road (Restaurant and Chai Lounge); 57 Mt Eden Road (Restaurant); 271 Karangahape Road (Chai Lounge)
Swamy and Padmaja Akuthota opened the first Satya on Hobson Street in 1999 as a means of survival. Having moved to New Zealand three years earlier, they had no hospitality experience but were well known as good cooks in the Indian community here.
“It was your typical migrant story,” explains son Sammy Akuthota, who now runs the handful of Satya restaurants scattered across Auckland’s central suburbs. “Dad was in a really highly speciaised engineering job and there were none available in that field for him here, so they decided to open a restaurant.”
As word spread – and to combat a demolition clause – Swamy and Padmaja opened additional Satya restaurants in Sandringham, Grafton, Ponsonby and eventually Mt Eden (the latter has now changed hands). In 2016, while his parents were away, Sammy cheekily opened Satya Chai Lounge Sandringham on a shoestring budget in the space behind his parents’ Sandringham Road restaurant; a second Chai Lounge is now open on Karangahape Road. The Satya family has never been thriving more.
True to the Akuthota family’s South Indian heritage (Sammy, his younger brother and both parents were all born in the southeastern Indian province of Andhra Pradesh), Satya serves South Indian food in a variety of styles. The restaurant specialises in dishes traditionally eaten in the morning, including its famous masala dosa, as well as a range of curries, parathas and condiments, from coconut chutney to cooling raitha.
Although carnivores will love the array of chicken, lamb, goat and seafood options, Satya is also one of the best places in Auckland for a vegetarian or vegan feed that doesn’t feel
