A new Burmese restaurant has quietly made a big impression on Brisbane's southside, with Sorai opening its doors in Carina in late June, occupying the Old Cleveland Road premises formerly home to Scripted Cafe. The venture brings together four partners — chef Alfan Musthafa, sous chef Laga "Bosco" Htoi, Min Hein Kyaw, and Su Sabai Zaw — to deliver a style of cooking that remains genuinely rare in Brisbane despite a substantial and growing Myanmar-born community across Australia.
How a Sunday market sparked a Burmese restaurant
The story of Sorai begins at the Global Food Markets in Woodridge, a lively Sunday market stacked with fresh produce and street food. Musthafa — who built his reputation through stints at Warisan, Luckies Kitchen and Ma Pa Me — visited the market with Htoi, whose aunt operates a food stall there. It proved to be a revelation.
"I tried her food and I was like, 'Mate, this is so good'. I was blown away," Musthafa says. Having grown up cooking stir fries and rice dishes on his grandparents' farm outside Jakarta, Burmese cuisine was entirely new territory. He was struck by its distinctive use of paprika powder, cumin and tomato, and by dishes he had simply never encountered before.
"When I learned to make the tofu nway noodles — the tofu sauce is actually chickpea, like a gravy. I've never seen something like this before. It's so good," he says. He also noticed the stall was packed. The demand for Burmese food was clearly there.
Filling a gap for Brisbane's Burmese community
The timing is significant. By mid-2024, 46,790 Myanmar-born people were living in Australia, many of them refugees, with around 30,000 having arrived between 2002 and 2022. Yet despite this, dedicated Burmese restaurants have remained scarce in Brisbane. Sorai is a direct response to that gap, with Htoi and Kyaw — both Burmese — overseeing a kitchen that leans heavily into their culinary heritage.
The menu is described as Burmese and modern Asian, with more than half the dishes rooted in Myanmar cooking. Familiar Thai and Indonesian options — pad Thai, massaman curry, mie goreng, som tum — sit alongside the standout Burmese dishes, offering an accessible entry point for curious diners.
The stars of the menu are the kind of comforting, deeply flavoured dishes recognisable to anyone who has travelled through Myanmar: kyay oh (vermicelli noodles with pork meatballs, pork offal and quail eggs, served dry or in bone broth), mohinga (rice noodle fish soup with lemongrass, shallots and herbs), lahpet thoke (tea leaf salad with cabbage, tomato, crunchy beans, sesame and garlic), and a Burmese-style chicken curry served with roti.
"A lot of our herbs and spices are similar to China and India in some respects, so people who don't know Burmese cuisine can often find some familiarity there," Kyaw says.
A warm space built on a shoestring
The team handled the fit-out themselves, transforming what was essentially a bare shell into a simple, welcoming room of timber and brick. Splashes of vivid yellow tiling, rattan lampshades and Burmese umbrellas mounted on the back wall give the space a distinctive, unhurried character designed with neighbourhood locals in mind.
"We just wanted to keep it uncomplicated. We're really happy with how it turned out," Musthafa says.
Drinks list and early reception
Sorai's liquor licence was only recently approved, so the drinks offering is still taking shape. Currently on the list are Felons beer on tap, a selection of Asian beers by the bottle, and a cocktail menu put together by Zaw — highlights include a tamarind whisky sour and a mango sticky rice take on a piña colada.
Early signs are promising. "The reception has been amazing so far," Musthafa says. For a city underserved in authentic Burmese dining, Sorai appears to have arrived at exactly the right moment.
