Just weeks ago, Warisan was little more than a concept and a piece of branding. The opening of Nick Wigley and Alfan Musthafa’s new Indonesian restaurant has come about so fast they didn’t even have time for a planned research trip to Bali. “We were scheduling that for the middle of November,” Wigley says.
“But this opportunity came up so we kind of had to pull the trigger.” You suspect it doesn’t matter – not initially, anyway. Musthafa is one of Brisbane’s most accomplished Indonesian chefs, having previously turned heads at Ma Pa Me on Little Stanley Street.
The success of that venue led him to propose the idea of Warisan shortly after taking over the kitchen at Wigley’s Luckies Kitchen in Bulimba at the beginning of the year. “When we opened Ma Pa Me [in late 2021] I was worried about how successful it would be, being Indonesian food,” Musthafa says. “But in the first few months, people were going crazy for it.
” Coming soon: A 500-person izakaya and karaoke bar in Fortitude Valley Ma Pa Me was inspired by Musthafa’s experiences growing up in West Java, where on school holidays he would live with his grandparents on their farm, learning to cook from his grandmother. Warisan is more about the street food he would eat in Bali on days off from working in hotel kitchens at Nusa Dua Beach Hotel, The Ritz-Carlton and Grand Hyatt Bali. “I asked Nick, ‘Have you been to Bali? Have you been to Jimbaran [Bay] and seen the fresh seafood there?’” M.
