Sorai restaurant opens in carina
Alfan Musthafa, known for Warisan, Luckies Kitchen and Ma Pa Me, teamed up with a group of Myanmar expats to create this 45-person live-in shelter.
Alfan Musthafa didn’t know much about Burmese food. Later, the Warisan chef-boss headed to Global Food Markets in Woodridge with his assistant Laga “Bosco” Htoi.
If you haven’t been to this vibrant Sunday market in Woodridge, you’re missing out. It’s full of fresh produce and has great street food options. Htoi’s aunt runs a food stall there.
“I tried his food and I was like, ‘Man, this is so good.’ I was blown away,” says Musthafa.
It was different from the stir-fried potato and rice dish his grandparents grew on their farm outside Jakarta.
“There’s a lot of noodles, curries, soups and things like that. This is different. They use more chili powder, cumin, tomatoes.”
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“When I learned [later] to make the tofu [nway] noodle-tofu sauce is actually chickpeas, like sauce. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Very good.”
Musthafa, one of Brisbane’s hot young talents behind Warisan and who has spent time at Luckies Kitchen and Ma Pa Me, also noted that the food stall was packed with diners.
By mid-2024, 46,790 Myanmar-born people, mostly refugees, were living in Australia, 30,000 of whom arrived between 2002 and 2022. But Burmese restaurants were few and far between in Brisbane.
Hence Sorai in Carina, which Musthafa and Htoi opened with Min Hein Kyaw and Su Sabai Zaw, also Burmese. It served its first meals in late June at the Old Cleveland Road premises formerly occupied by Scripted Cafe.
“We took care of the reinforcement ourselves,” says Musthafa. “It was almost empty, with an empty kitchen and floor. We just wanted to keep it simple. We’re really happy with how it turned out.”
It must be so. Sorai is a simple yet warm, inviting space made of wood and brick; The defining features of this place are the vibrant yellow tiles, rattan lampshades and Burmese umbrellas on the back wall. It’s comfortable, designed with locals in mind, and it feels like it.
Overseeing the kitchen are Kyaw and Htoi. Their menu is billed as Burmese and modern Asian, with “more than 50 percent of the dishes being Burmese.”
There are familiar Thai and Indonesian dishes, especially pad Thai, massaman curry, mie goreng, som tum, that sort of thing, to help grease the wheels of curious locals.
But the stars are the comforting types of noodles, salads and curries that anyone who’s traveled to Myanmar has likely encountered: kyay oh (noodle noodles with pork meatballs, pork offal, quail eggs, hard-boiled egg and choy sum, served in dry or slow-cooked bone broth), mohinga (rice noodle fish soup with lemongrass, shallots and herbs), lahpet thoke (tea leaf with cabbage, tomatoes, crispy beans). Burmese chicken curry served with salad, sesame seeds and minced garlic) and roti.
“Many of our herbs and spices are similar to China and India in some ways, so people who don’t know Burmese cuisine can often find some familiarity there,” Kyaw says.
The drinks list is still coming together, as Sorai’s liquor license was just approved, but there’s a Felons beer on draft, a bunch of Asian beers by the bottle, and a cocktail list compiled by Zaw that includes a variation of the piña colada made with tamarind whiskey sour and mango sticky rice.
“The reception so far has been amazing,” says Musthafa. “It’s been really busy. The support from both the local community and the Burmese community who travel from across Brisbane has been overwhelming. We’ve seen familiar faces two or three times already.”
Sunday-Thurs. Open 11.00-21.00, Friday-Saturday 11.00-21.30.
850 Old Cleveland Rd, Carina, (07) 2143 6221.
Matt Shea is Food and Culture Editor at the Brisbane Times. He is a former editor and editor-in-chief at Broadsheet Brisbane and has written for Escape, Qantas Magazine, Guardian, Jetstar Magazine and SilverKris, among others.
