New Indonesian Restaurant Sate Opens in Round Rock, Texas | Eater Austin
"Opened as a Pflugerville Indonesian food truck and now a Round Rock counter-service restaurant, it opened its physical location at 150 Sundance Parkway, Suite 400 on November 2. Co-owners and couple Tina Villarreal and Eugene Villarreal started the business in 2019 as a pop-up so they could recreate the food they missed from Indonesia (Tina is from Indonesia; Eugene is an Austin native); they opened the food truck in July 2021 (which closed sometime in 2022) and had always wanted to open a brick-and-mortar. The restaurant focuses on Indonesian barbecue and satay-style skewers — ayam (grilled marinated chicken), babi (grilled marinated pork), beef, and tempeh — and offers dishes such as ayam bakar (charcoal-grilled chicken, rice, and pickled vegetables), gado-gado (a salad with steamed vegetables and peanut sauce), rice cakes, and rice both yellow (turmeric and coconut milk) or jasmine. Everything is grilled using bintochan charcoal on a yakitori grill (as opposed to the direct-flame grill the truck used). "We wanted to create a cultural destination for our friends and fans to introduce Indonesian cuisine to our community, which has a low representation," they write over email to Eater. "Meat on a stick is a popular food item and satay translates well here in Texas." The couple plans to expand the menu with more grilled dishes such as seafood and fish, offers weekend specials announced on its Instagram and Facebook pages, and operates 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday; takeout and delivery are available online and there are indoor dine-in areas. The write-up also notes other Austin Indonesian options, including Brentwood food truck Yeni’s Fusion and Davis Springs Chinese-Indonesian restaurant Twin Panda." - Nadia Chaudhury
