Restaurants in Phuket Province
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Babylon Beach Club
Accessible by dirt road are the polished, whitewashed tiki environs of the Babylon Beach Club. The food is nice, and all the Thai specialities are on offer, along with fresh grilled seafood and good burgers. Dishes are served on banana leaf liners, and four tables are set up with white tablecloths and umbrellas mere centimetres from the sea.
reviewed
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China Inn
The organic movement meets traditional Phuket cuisine at this renovated turn-of-the-century shophouse. As well as homemade yoghurt and fruit smoothies flavoured with organic honey, there are many vegie options, including a massaman curry (chicken, beef or pork stewed in potatoes and usually peanuts) with tofu, and a favourite Phuket dish, red curry with crab.
reviewed
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Savoey
On an island packed with weighed-to-order fish grills, this is one of the best. Its huge ice shelf is packed with lobsters, prawns, grouper, red snapper, sole, trevally and barracuda. It also has live lobsters. It has one menu and four dining rooms – two of them on the sand. The food is always great, and the prices are quite reasonable.
reviewed
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M&M’s Pizzeria
Simply put, this is easily the best pizzeria on the island. The slightly sour crust is thin but with ample integrity, and its pastas and salads are tasty, too.
reviewed
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Siam Indigo
A stylish, whitewashed, shabby-chic gem, nestled in an 80-year-old Sino-Portuguese relic that specialises in Royal Thai cuisine with a twist. There’s a fiery seared tuna larb (minced chicken, beef or pork salad mixed with chilli, mint and coriander), minced and spiced pork satay roasted on steamed lemongrass, grilled duck breast sliced and stewed in a massaman curry, as well as a few Phuketian dishes, including gaeng poo, a sweet and spicy crab-meat curry. Siam Indigo has style, soul (check out the work of local artists on the walls) and insane food, which makes it one of the best restaurants on the island, if not the best. Be sure not to miss it.
reviewed
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Som Tum Lanna
This place has three dishes worth mentioning: the salted, grilled red snapper; the grilled chicken; and the paint-peelingly spicy som tum (green papaya salad). Now, the fish is very good, but you can find its equal on Hat Rawai. The chicken on the other hand…well, heed the words of another blissed-out, greasy-mouthed customer: ‘This is some fucking killer fucking chicken!’ As for the som tum? Don’t be a hero. Order it mild. It will still bring some serious heat.
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Tatonka
Harold Schwarz developed his ‘Globe Trotter’ cuisine by taking fresh local products and combining them with cooking and presentation techniques learned in Europe, Colorado and Hawaii. The eclectic, tapas-style selection includes creative vegetarian and seafood dishes and such delights as Peking duck pizza (220B). There’s also a tasting menu (750B per person, minimum two people), which lets you try a little of everything. Make reservations in the high season.
reviewed
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Bang Rong Seafood
This fish-farm-turned-restaurant is set on a floating pier in the luscious mangroves. It has red and white snapper, crab and mussels, and it plucks your catch after you order, so you know it’s fresh. You can have it steamed, fried or grilled, but it’s a Muslim enterprise so you can’t have beer. Come at sunset, when fishermen chat on the dock, and the light plays on both the water and the mangroves. It’s a special scene.
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Wilai
Local Phuket food is fried and steamed at this neighbourhood lunch counter. Its speciality is noodles. It does a Phuketian pàt tai (Thai fried noodles, usually with peanuts) that has some kick to it, and a fantastic seafood mee sua. Think: noodles sautéed with egg, greens, prawns, chunks of sea bass and incredibly tender squid. Wash it down with fresh chrysanthemum juice. We call it Phuket soul food.
reviewed
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The Pad Thai Shop
On the busy main road behind Karon, just north of the tacky Ping Pong Bar, is this glorified local food stand that spills forth from the owners’ home. Here you’ll find rich and savoury chicken-noodle stew, beef-bone soup, spicy basil stir-fries and the best pàt tai on planet earth. Hot and sweet, packed with prawns, tofu, egg and peanuts, and wrapped in a fresh banana leaf to go. You will be grateful.
reviewed
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The Ninth Floor
To get some perspective on just how massive Patong has become, head on up to the 9th floor of the Sky Inn Condotel building where you can watch the sea of lights spread through sliding-floor-to-ceiling glass doors. This rising star of Phuket’s dining scene is the highest open-air restaurant on the island, but its ridiculously tender, perfectly prepared steaks and chops are what made it a Patong institution.
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Pad Thai Shop
On the busy main road behind Karon, just north of the tacky Ping Pong Bar, is this glorified food stand that spills from the owners’ home onto a dirt lot. It’s only open for lunch, when you can find chicken-feet stew, beef-bone soup and the best pàt tai on earth. Spicy and sweet, packed with prawns, tofu, egg and peanuts, and wrapped in a fresh banana leaf – you’ll be back for seconds, we promise.
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Rockfish
Perched above the river mouth and the bobbing long tails, with beach, bay and mountain views, is Kamala’s best dining room. Its eclectic brand of fusion won it Phuket’s restaurant of the year in 2005, and it’s still rolling out gems like its braised duck breast with kale, and prosciutto-wrapped scallops served on a bed of warm asparagus. And the 99B Bloody Mary doesn’t suck either.
reviewed
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Chicken Rice Briley
The only diner in Patong Food Park to offer sustenance when the sun shines. All it serves is a perfectly steamed and sliced chicken breast on a bed of steamed rice, bowls of chicken broth swimming with crumbled bits of meat and bone, and roast pork. The chicken is best when dipped in its fantastic chilli sauce. There’s a reason this dining room is forever packed with locals.
reviewed
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Natalie’s Restaurant & Bar
Perennially popular, the less glamorous cousin of the swanky Mali on the Sugar Plum resort mall serves terrific, affordable Thai favourites and flaunts a tasty fish grill for dinner where you can pluck your prawns, snapper and calamari from the ice. There’s a homey feel here, and the bar’s flatscreen shows current Premier and Champions League football matches.
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Bo.lan
Bo and Dylan (Bo.lan, a play on words that also means ‘ancient’), former chefs at London’s Michelin-starred Nahm, have provided Bangkok with a compelling reason to reconsider upscale Thai cuisine. The couple’s scholarly approach to Thai cooking has resulted in diverse set meals featuring dishes such as green peppercorn relish and grilled-banana-blossom salad.
reviewed
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Rawai Seafood Grills
More than a dozen grill huts line Rawai’s beach road, and it doesn’t much matter which one you choose. All the fish is fresh; the clams, mussels, prawns and lobster are not to be overlooked either. Make sure you try the spicy sauce, not that sweet and sour syrup. The prices are so good you will be stunned. And like the Governator, you will be back.
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Baan Rimlay
The Thai seafood house to the right of the pier steams clams, mussels and fish, and grills squid, prawns and lobster to perfection. It also makes terrific soups and salads if you’d rather eat light. The seafood is a bit pricier here than at the more humble seafood joints down the street, but the location is superb and the views exceptional.
reviewed
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Batik Seafood
This beautiful beach-garden restaurant, nestled on the southern end of Hat Nai Yang just after the road turns to dust, sports tables beneath thatched gazebos and is surrounded by orchids. Batik Seafood specialises in fresh grilled fish, which it chooses from the fish market that is held just north of the restaurant every afternoon.
reviewed
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Lotus Restaurant
An open-walled eatery 500m west of the entrance to Banyan Tree Phuket, this is the first in a row of beachside Thai and seafood restaurants that stretches to the south. It’s clean, breezy and friendly, and has an amazing assortment of live crab, lobster, shrimp, fish and other visual and culinary delights in well-tended tanks.
reviewed
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Soi Polo Fried Chicken
Your nose will lead you to what many claim is the best kài thâwt (fried chicken) in town; it certainly bitch-slaps KFC. It’s golden and crispy on the outside with lots of fried garlic bits. One half order will generously feed two. In order to eat like a local, order sticky rice and employ the spicy dipping sauces.
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Thai Kitchen
Thai Kitchen serves up steaming bowls of curry, pungent soup and an array of daily specials. Its menu includes pumpkin and prawns, braised eggplant with prawns, and boiled eggs with coriander and tamarind sauce. There’s a brunch buffet – that’s when the locals flock here. From 2pm onward, you’ll have to order off the menu.
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Sabai Beach Restaurant
If you’d prefer your fresh grilled seafood served beachfront with a little less pretence and loads of smiles and flavour, try this family-owned dining patio. Sift through an ample selection of fresh snapper, mackerel, prawns, squid and crab, and munch deeply on a sweet stretch of Patong beach overlooking the turquoise bay.
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Kachang Floating Restaurant
Set adrift in Ao Phuket, rickety Kachang is only a few minutes east of Phuket Town, but it’s far off the beaten tourist trail. Free long-tail boats shuttle grumbling bellies to the floating restaurant surrounded by schools of corralled fish. Enjoy soft-shell crab in the waning light as the sun dips behind the hills.
reviewed
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Lim’s
Half a kilometre uphill from the coast road to Hat Kamala is this modern, moulded concrete dining room serving upscale Thai cuisine. It serves papaya, pomelo and green mango salad; squid stir-fried with cashews; and roast duck in red curry sauce. When celebrities land in Phuket, most spend at least one evening here.
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