By Angela Russo
WILLIAMSVILLE — Sun Cuisines got to Burmese food before anyone else in Western New York did. It’s still the easiest place in the suburbs to try it, and one of the cheapest, as long as you give the kitchen some time.
This column isn’t based on a visit. It draws on Sun’s published menu and prices, the owners’ own words in published interviews, Erie County Department of Health inspection records, earlier professional coverage, and a read of public diner reviews. Nobody from The Chronicle ate there for this piece.
The family behind it
Sun is owned by Kevin Lin and Stephanie Lin. According to the restaurant’s own history, the couple came to the United States from Burma in July 1996, after studying Asian cuisine and the food trade in Tokyo. They introduced sushi to Western New York and opened Sun Food Market on Niagara Street in 2010. By 2012 the market had become a full-service restaurant.
The website states the mission plainly: “Our mission is to provide great tasting food that is healthy & unique.”
In a 2018 Buffalo Spree profile, editor Elizabeth Licata credited the Lins with opening the area’s first restaurant serving Burmese dishes. In 2013 they added a black rice menu. Lin explained how he keeps adjusting the menu: “I communicate with customers face to face every day.”
The original Niagara Street restaurant closed in late 2024, and only the Williamsville location still runs as Sun. Lin told Andrew Galarneau of Four Bites that he wanted to step back into a landlord role there. “Less headaches,” he said.
Lin also said about 100 Burmese immigrants had learned to work in an American kitchen at Sun. “I trained them,” he said. “I told them how to open, how to make recipe, and if you take care, you will grow, you will make money.” Galarneau counted at least 15 Burmese-Thai restaurants in the Buffalo area by then.
The Williamsville kitchen has seen change too. In July, Buffalo Rising reported that chef Zin Thang, who had led the kitchen at Sun’s Williamsville location for nine years, had launched Zin’s Kitchen. The same report said the Main Street location remains open.
What’s on the menu, and what it costs
The menu runs to three cuisines: Burmese, Thai and sushi. The Burmese side is the reason to go.
The prices are easy on the wallet:
- Tea leaf salad (le peth thoat) and ginger salad: $9 each.
- Samusa: $5.
- Chicken curry with paratha, as a starter: $8.
- Own no koksware, the chicken coconut noodle soup the menu calls “A Sun Favorite!”: $8 small, $14 large.
- Burmese flat wide noodles, Burmese fried rice and pumpkin stew: $17 each.
- Chicken curry: $18. Beef curry: $19.
- Pad Thai and most Thai curries and noodle plates: $17.
Sun’s black rice salad costs $11. It mixes avocado, mango, red pepper, cashews, peanuts and spring mix with a house dressing, and the menu says of it, “This made us famous!”
Sushi rolls start at $8 for a mango roll. Specialty rolls cost more, like an $18 yellowtail roll made with black rice. The big-ticket plates are a crispy whole fish at $30, roast duck at $36 and a lobster and seafood medley at $42. The Emperor Seafood Feast, billed as dinner for two, is $101.
Vegan and gluten-free choices are marked throughout the menu.
What the inspectors found
The county’s records are the weakest part of the picture, though the trend is improving.
A routine inspection on Oct. 23, 2025 found four critical and 18 non-critical violations. Among them:
- Staff said sushi rice had sat in the cooker for about 24 hours with no refrigeration or hot holding. It was thrown out.
- Two squeeze bottles of cleaning fluid weren’t labeled.
- The dish machine wasn’t sanitizing at the required chlorine strength until a fresh bucket of sanitizer was hooked up. It tested properly before the inspector left.
- The manual dishwashing routine had no separate sanitizing step.
At a re-inspection on Nov. 21, the inspector logged one critical violation, a repeat. Glass noodles in a steamer measured 102 degrees and were discarded. There were also eight non-critical items.
The Dec. 23 re-inspection found no critical violations and five non-critical ones. The county’s online history shows no inspection since then.
What diners say
Public ratings are good. Sun holds 3.9 stars from 236 reviews on Yelp and 4.1 from 200 ratings on Restaurantji, where 62 percent of ratings are five stars and 11 percent are one star.
The praise centers on the Burmese cooking and the black rice. Reviews posted since the summer kitchen change are encouraging.
An August 2026 Restaurantji reviewer wrote, “The food is more savory than sweet, which we really liked. The beef curry reminded me of Indonesian rendang and Indonesian oxtail.” A September reviewer called it “Authentic and tasty sushi managed by local business owner. Highly recommend!”
The complaints follow a pattern too. Across platforms, diners describe long waits and thin staffing on busy nights. On the sushi, one reviewer liked the black rice but said of the rolls, “It was mostly rice.”
The verdict
Sun Cuisines is worth the trip for the Burmese menu, not for sushi you could get elsewhere.
The smart order is built from the cheapest part of the menu: tea leaf salad, the large own no koksware and the beef curry. That comes to $42 at menu prices, before tax and tip, and makes a reasonable shared order for two. Add the black rice salad if you want to taste the dish that made Sun’s name.
It’s an especially good bet for vegans and for anyone who has never tried Burmese food and wants a gentle, inexpensive start.
Go when it’s quiet, or order takeout. Expect to wait on a busy night.
The health record is improving, but the 2025 inspections are a fair reason to keep an eye on the next report. The kitchen has also been under new leadership since the summer, so the recent reviews matter more than older ones.
Featured image: Main Street in the Village of Williamsville. Photo by Andre Carrotflower via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped.
If you go
Sun Cuisines
5759 Main St., Williamsville, NY 14221
(716) 313-2211 · suncuisines.com
Hours (as published by the restaurant): Monday–Thursday 11 a.m.–9 p.m.; Friday 11:30 a.m.–10 p.m.; Saturday noon–10 p.m.; Sunday closed
Prices: starters and salads $5–$11; most Burmese and Thai entrées $17–$19; specialties $30–$42
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