Satkar's Reopening Made Possible by Family's Resilience

It is barely visible from busy El Camino Real, but in the four-plus weeks since Satkar Indian Cuisine opened near BevMo at the Bernardo Avenue intersection, its former clientele from Los Altos and neighboring cities have quickly discovered it.

Although Satkar is a recent addition to Sunnyvale’s wealth of Indian food options, it is hardly new.

“The food was just as good as we remembered it,” said Sarah Alvarez-Horine, who frequently stopped in when the family-run restaurant was located at 233 State St. in Los Altos. However, in 2007, an electrical fire caused Satkar to close, and Alvarez-Horine said her heart had sunk when she learned of the closure.

So when her husband pointed out the sign advertising the restaurant’s reopening while driving past it last fall, Alvarez-Horine could barely believe it. Owner Kirandeep Kaur and her family, however, never considered the closure permanent, and after years of ups and downs, they have succeeded in reopening Satkar in a small shopping complex at 1253 W. El Camino Real, near South Bernardo Avenue.

The restaurant certainly lives up to its family-run reputation. Mukhtiar Singh, the father of the family, is the main chef, but he occasionally pops his head out from the kitchen to interact with customers and see how they are enjoying their food. His wife Kirandeep works the front counter, where their daughter Sukhi Kaur sometimes helps her.

When she is not helping up front, Sukhi, a rising Wilcox High School sophomore, and her sister work on homework at one of the tables off to the side, while their younger brother draws pictures in his sketchpad. The sight of these siblings working on their respective projects was a familiar one for customers at the Los Altos location.

For Alvarez-Horine, it was reminiscent of the days before the fire.

“I remember the daughter doing her homework at the table,” said Alvarez-Horine, a Sunnyvale resident. “Every time I came, she would always be there. It made it feel more home-style. The food is excellent and I felt like, in a funny way, [I was] coming in as a guest to their home.”

This home-style atmosphere is precisely the one that the family strives to create. Ailesh Surdi, Sukhi’s uncle, explained that they always prepare food to meet guest preferences, such as how spicy a guest wants the food to be. Meanwhile, Kirandeep said they try to treat customers like family members by keeping them happy and only making fresh food, instead of using any frozen products.

Ultimately, Satkar’s success as a family-run business heavily relied on the relationship the family had built with its customers over the years. Even while they were working at the original Los Altos location, they sold breads and sauces at farmers’ markets around the Bay Area, and this occupation became crucial when the restaurant closed in 2007.

“We still tried to stay in touch with the community,” Sukhi said.

Alvarez-Horine, who became a regular at Satkar in 2006, was able to keep track of how the family was doing through the farmers’ markets. After her husband had spotted the Satkar sign at the BevMo strip mall last fall, she said she encountered Kirandeep at the Campbell Farmers’ Market and was thrilled to hear her confirm that the restaurant would be reopening.

When it finally did so in May of this year, Alvarez-Horine’s husband surprised her with a take-out menu, and she paid a visit to Satkar right away, where she was reminded of what she loved about it.

“The dishes all have very unique flavors to them,” Alvarez-Horine said. “The chef is — he’s really a professional, top-notch … They use high-quality ingredients … The portions are very generous as well. I feel like it’s a good value, and I don’t mind eating leftovers because they’re so good.”

The story behind Satkar extends beyond the family’s resilience throughout the reopening process. Singh, the head chef, had been involved in the restaurant business before Satkar first opened in Los Altos in 1998. He worked at his brother’s Indian restaurant, Janta, in Palo Alto for five to six years, which is where he said he learned to cook.

But more than anything, according to his daughter Sukhi, Singh wanted to open a restaurant of his own, which is how Satkar came to be. The name Satkar, in both Hindi and Sanskrit, means honor, respect and hospitality; the family wanted to maintain a restaurant with a welcoming atmosphere.

Satkar also stuck around and did well because, according to Sukhi, the family plowed through the difficulties they faced, and never questioned that they would reopen the restaurant.

“The bottom line is we have to survive,” Surdi said. “The family, everybody together cooperates; we have started again. That’s the bottom line … God help you, again go.”

“Sometimes in the life, up times, down times, up times, down times,” Surdi added. “When you have the down times, you have peace, relax, think and go again.”

Now that Satkar has been open for a month, it has attracted new customers as well. Kirandeep and Sukhi explained that this is partly because their old customers have returned to the restaurant with friends and family members, and partly because Bay Area residents want to try out the new place in the neighborhood. For example, on a recent Wednesday afternoon, San Jose resident Stephen Cullum arrived for his fourth visit since Satkar’s grand reopening.

“It’s the best Indian food I’ve had since being back in the United States,” said Cullum, who worked as a network engineer in Germany for three years. He ordered the chicken tikka masala, requesting that it be made “really, really spicy. Make me cry.”

Alvarez-Horine said the family’s efforts over the years made Satkar’s reopening all the more exciting.

“It was one of those things where I realized ... how much of themselves they put into starting this restaurant, and their lives really revolved around it, when you see that the whole family’s involved,” Alvarez-Horine said. “I was so thrilled, just for them, that they bounced back.”