RESTAURANT NEWS | KENTUCKY
Lemongrass Comes to Louisville at Seria
Chef Sebastian Moh's neighborhood restaurant pairs Malaysian and Thai flavors with local seasonal ingredients.
SERAI | MAP | INSTAGRAM
By Jamie Dutton
7:29 a.m. ET, Oct. 26, 2026
Grilled morels
AUTHOR BIO: Jamie Dutton's job has her in airports regularly, as does a family spread out across the Midwest. She’s partial to BPTs and Bell’s.
The Malay word for lemongrass is serai, and it’s done a fair amount of work at the Louisville restaurant that took its name before a single plate arrives. Chef Sebastian Moh named his Louisville restaurant for the stalk that perfumes so much of the region’s cooking, and then he built a menu that highlights it.
Serai, which opened recently in the Clifton neighborhood, runs on Malaysian and Thai spices, herbs, and techniques, matched with local seasonal ingredients and a touch of Chinese wok stir-fry.
Seared branzino
Moh is a Malaysian native, and he describes the place plainly: a neighborhood restaurant. The kitchen grinds its own spices and simmers its signature pastes every day, which is the kind of unglamorous daily work that’ll show up in the food.
The three-way split makes sense once you hear his reasoning. Thailand, China, and Malaysia are neighboring countries, so the techniques and the spice palettes overlap constantly, and Serai cooks in the overlap: Thai heat, Malaysian depth, and the occasional Chinese wok stir-fry running through both.
The menu reads like a tour of the region’s greatest hits, plus a few slow-cooked detours. The tuna tartare comes with lemongrass, bird’s eye chili, and basil. The duck confit arrives in a black peppercorn and ginger sauce with pan-roasted kabocha squash, and the seared branzino gets a shallot sambal. Dumplings open the meal, and the long braises close the argument: beef short rib rendang, braised lamb shank, chicken curry, and crab fried rice.
Hamachi sashimi
The setting has its own history. The small brick building is nearly 200 years old, originally a toll house on the old Frankfort Pike, and it’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Clifton Three Mile Tollhouse. Moh kept the bones and gave the restaurant a logo to match the cooking: a hibiscus, the national flower of Malaysia.
Short rib rendang
Baby eggplant
Serai was a long time coming. Moh first announced it in late 2025, aiming for a March opening, but after a few delays the doors finally opened in September.
The historic building has always collected a toll. Two centuries ago it took coins from travelers on the Frankfort Pike; now it collects in lemongrass, sambal, and rendang. The building has, once again, landed on its feet.
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By ERIC BARTON