Opened December of 2010 in Downtown Jersey City, Satis Bistro, Cafe, Wine Bar and Salumeria
Michael Fiorianti, formerly a chef at Goldman Sachs, became the executive chef at Satis when it opened in December 2010. (Satis means enough in Latin, as in the word satisfied.) Now the rest of us can enjoy the dishes he mastered by observing his Italian-American grandmother in her Brooklyn kitchen and, later, celebrated chefs like Thomas Keller.
I learned these facts during a telephone interview with Mr. Fiorianti after my visits, but only by tasting his pillow-soft ricotta gnocchi or lusty hanger steak can one appreciate how thoroughly he has absorbed these lessons. I ate simple dishes at Satis (bread, cured meat and cheese) and complex ones (a duck ragù entwined with stracciatella cheese), and all of them had the same effect: I wanted to move to within walking distance of Satis so that I could eat Mr. Fiorianti’s dishes every day.
Other talents helped create Satis. Michael Garcia and Geza Gulas, the owners, discovered a century-old building where Eastern European immigrants who settled in the area in the early 1900s bought their bread and meat. The soaring space inspired them to create a restaurant that had at its heart a salumeria. From here, patrons can purchase cheeses and meats to go — Satis orders them from Salumeria Biellese, which also supplies Eataly in Manhattan — or they can sample them in any of three beautifully renovated dining areas.
Each of these dining areas, a loft, a main room and a wine bar, is outfitted with a mix of functional accessories, like filament bulbs, and romantic ones, like swooping velvet drapes. The elegant marble bar is a copy of one that Mr. Gulas admired during a trip to his beloved Budapest, where he was born.
The best way to begin a meal at Satis is with a chef’s selection of meats and cheeses. It might include Murcia al Vino, a buttery goat cheese from Spain with a wine-soaked rind; or tartufo, a peppery, spiced salame whose smoky essence is the product of fragrant black summer truffles.
The bread that accompanies these items is appealingly tangy, and no wonder: it’s made using wine in the starter.
The apricot confit served with the chef’s selection is the essence of ripe, summer fruit. It and every other item on the platter may tempt you to make an entire meal of bread, cheese, cured meat — and wine. The bar offers a vast selection, including 47 that you can order by the glass.
Beyond the products of the salumeria are other treasures. An involtini, or delicate eggplant roll, oozes peppery La Quercia prosciutto and melted buffalo mozzarella cheese. The pâté de campagne that Mr. Fiorianti prepares from duck and pork livers exemplifies the best of country cooking: it emphasizes fat and highlights its virtues.
In contrast to these heartier appetizers, the arugula salad is both ethereal, thanks to a vinaigrette that Mr. Fiorianti lightens with fennel, and seductive, a result of the extra-sharp parmigiano-reggiano he shaves onto the greens.
Seductive also describes the restaurant’s signature dates wrapped in bacon — sweet, salty, smoky packets of pleasure. Everywhere you look around the candlelit space, you see people tossing these back like candy.
You expect a restaurant built around a salumeria to feature perfectly cooked meats, and Satis obliges. It produces a filet mignon so rich it pops in the mouth with the lusty flavor of ripe beef, and a hanger steak with a hard crust and a silky, moist interior.
But can a restaurant so devoted to beef and salami work the same magic with seafood? The creamy diver scallops, each about an inch in diameter, prove that it can.
Brussels sprouts, which accompany the scallops, are also available as a side dish, afloat in a golden stew of caramelized Vidalia onions. During the weeks after I ate them, I ordered brussels sprouts in every restaurant I visited, but eventually I gave up. No place makes them like Satis. As one of my companions said, “Everything here is just better than the usual version of everything anywhere else.”
Desserts include an irresistible sweet potato maple pecan cobbler, a German chocolate cake sundae and gelati in unusual flavors, like ricotta, custard and Elvis Presley (banana with a peanut butter swirl).
All restaurants have flaws, but when I asked the five people who accompanied me to Satis to name any, only one person could: The baby carrots served with her hanger steak were undercooked and a little bitter.
Well, maybe, but otherwise our meals were almost perfect.
