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@Work: Satyamuna

Oct. 15, 2006 — St. John residents and visitors now have another choice when it comes to healthy eating: Satyamuna opened Sunday at the Marketplace shopping center on Route 108.
"I had dreamed of a restaurant for a long time," says Ofer Elyakin.
Elyakin, 33, and his wife of five months, Guiliana Cassataro, 37, moved to St. John in August to begin work on opening Satyamuna.
The name Satyamuna comes from a combination of their spiritual names. The Saty comes from Elyakin's spiritual name, Satyananda, and Cassataro's spiritual name, Yamuna. In the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit, "Satyananda" means truth, while "Yamuna" is the name of a holy river in India.
The tiny restaurant with a vegetarian-Mediterranean slant has only 25 seats, with most of them located in the spacious area outside their door. You can find Satyamuna on the second floor of the Marketplace, just inside the entrance, where it's open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Breakfasts run to waffles, pancakes and eggs, all prepared in a healthy way, as well as oatmeal and homemade granola.
The lunch menu includes falafel, panini sandwiches, salads and more. Cassataro plans to cook up some of the pasta dishes she learned at her mother's knee in Sicily, as well as her favorite homemade capanota, a tasty blend of eggplant, capers and other items that works well as a side dish or with myriad other dishes. And tofu comes in several ways, including tofu wings. They're marinated and served with the house barbecue sauce.
Dinners focus on East Indian food with dishes like aloo gobi, a potato and cauliflower curry, and channa chag, made with chickpeas and spinach.
And don't forget the desserts, like baklava and cinnamon-apple muffins.
The two first visited St. John in May on their honeymoon at Serendip condos. "We went home and marinated the idea of opening a restaurant," Cassataro says.
They initially thought about opening a bed and breakfast in her native Sicily, she says, but found the bureaucracy too complicated, even through she holds a dual U.S. and Italian citizenship. St. John seemed to fit the bill. It was slow and reminded them of Sicily.
Elyakin returned in August, taking to everyone he met about their dream. Soon he found the small space at the Marketplace.
The two met at a yoga ashram in Grass Valley, Calif., where Elyakin taught and Cassataro took a class. After Cassataro returned to New York, where her family had moved, Elyakin followed.
In addition to their career as yoga teachers, both of their resumes include many stints in the stints in the hospitality industry. In fact, Elyakin once cooked in a French restaurant in his native Israel and at the yoga retreat in California.
Satymuna's current hours are 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. Cassatara says this schedule may change as the restaurant evolves.
Call Elyakin and Cassataro at 774-3663 or visit their website.
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