Experience Phuket like the locals and with the locals! Try excellent small restaurants most tourists miss entirely, local food, desserts and drinks, markets, shops and even beaches!
Pa Mai Kanom Jeen (ขนมจีนป้ามัย) is a modest local Thai restaurant located at the intersection of Dibuk Road and Satun Road, just next to the famous Blue Elephant Restaurant in Old Phuket Town. Pa Mai has been a popular local place for decades.
Khao Tom Thanon Di Buk is a local restaurant famous for its morning rice porridge and noodle soup, located on Phang Nga Road in the back of Phuket Town, and only open from 6 in the morning to 12 pm. The restaurant has been listed three years in a row in the Michelin Guide for Thailand.
We Camping Phuket is a local restaurant in Kathu, with a fun camping decor and a vast outdoor sitting area. Despite the name, the place is not related to camping at all.
Somtam Puma 2 Kathu is another hidden local restaurant we always enjoy in Kathu. The food is excellent and truly local, the team is great, it’s cheap, and the surroundings are fun. You can sit at normal tables, or one of those ‘salas’ most tourists find rather uncomfortable.
O Cha Rot is an unassuming local restaurant, but it serves one of the best noodle soups in Phuket Town, so good that it made it to the Michelin Guide in Phuket. The restaurant has no decoration whatsoever, white wall, stainless cooking station and stainless tables.
Red Clam in Kathu, or Hoi Pai Daeng in Thai, is a local restaurant serving good and simple Thai food, perfect for sharing with your friends at the end of the day, the way Thai food is best enjoyed. The restaurant is modest, but the setting is fun, with a vast open-air garden with open tables and those typical bamboo huts so popular in Thai restaurants. In case of rain, there is also a large covered area in the back.
Tasak Seafood is a modest but excellent local restaurant serving inexpensive seafood in a beautiful seaside location in Paklok.
Wanlamun is the most popular Thai sweets and Thai desserts restaurant in Phuket Town. The restaurant has been open for decades and serves an astonishingly large choice of local sweets you probably didn’t even know existed.
Krua Ohm is a small and modest local Thai restaurant in Kathu with a mention on the famous Michelin Guide for two consecutive years.
Ta Tuay is a little-known local restaurant, hidden not far from the Sarasin Bridge in the very north of Phuket, near Sai Kaew Beach. Ta Tuay serves excellent local food and dishes from Phuket.
Baan Ar Jor is a hotel, a restaurant and a museum with a long history that started in 1936. This house has always been one of the most mysterious old mansions of Phuket, standing lonely near Mai Khao Beach in the north of Phuket.
Jadjan is an excellent local Thai restaurant hidden on the outskirts of Phuket Town. Not many travellers know that a former chef from a 5-star hotel in Bangkok runs it.
Jongjit Kitchen in Kathu is proof that a restaurant doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive to be excellent, and even receive a Michelin Plate for fresh ingredients, carefully prepared. The restaurant is local and modest, the prices are low and the food served is excellent and truly local, making it a good culinary experience while in Phuket.
Kin-Kub-Ei Restaurant is a hidden gem serving delicious southern dishes cooked by Khun Tubtim with her family recipes and served in a beautiful garden near the main road to Bangtao Beach.
Kanom Jeen Saphan Hin is a long time favourite restaurant in Phuket Town where mostly locals come for a late breakfast, lunch or even dinner.
Hong Khao Tom Pla is a discreet and long-established restaurant in Phuket Town, named after its famous fish rice porridge speciality. Behind this modest appearance is a little gem, so good that the Michelin Guide awarded them a ‘Bib Gourmand’, which is a sign of good quality and good value cooking.
Southern Thai food is a treat for those who love seafood and want to explore intense and spicy flavours.
Ketho Coffee & Kitchen is a dim sum restaurant very popular with locals for their breakfast, mostly for their dim sums but also for their soups and rice porridge.
Noodle soup is everywhere in Phuket (‘Kuey Tiaow’ in Thai), and while it’s not precisely Thai food, it is entirely part of everyday life in Thailand. Small restaurants and carts will serve it on almost every street at any time of the day and night, not only for lunch, dinner and even breakfast.
Chom Chan is an excellent Thai restaurant that serves a great selection of Phuket dishes and local specialities. It’s a cosy small house with a garden almost hidden on the outskirts of Phuket Town and can easily be missed when driving by.
Surprisingly, there are still amazing places people miss entirely when visiting Phuket. And like most people, you want to visit Phuket, but you wish to see it from a lesser-known angle and discover places most people haven’t heard of.
Nom Jeen Phuket is a beautiful and relaxing new local restaurant serving kanom jeen on the outskirt of Phuket Town. There are quite a few kanom jeen shops around the island but this one feels very relaxed and trendy in a casual young fashion, and yet, it’s not expensive!
Mae Tan’s House is an excellent local Thai restaurant in Phuket Town. It is slightly away from the old streets of historical Phuket, where the tourist crowd always go for their selfies and therefore addresses more to a local clientele, and that is a good sign!
Krua Maikhao is one of the most underrated local Thai restaurants in Phuket. It’s not fancy, the menu is not long, and lunch at Boon only costs a few baht, but the taste is unique.
Thailand is known worldwide for its amazing food, but it doesn’t stop here. There are also many Thai sweets and desserts to try during your stay in Phuket. Of course, everyone knows the delicious pancakes (or roti) and the mango sticky rice,
Ko Ang Seafood is a local restaurant serving excellent seafood on the east side of Phuket Town. Ko Ang has been around for a long time and started as a modest shop with no decoration and a zinc roof. But seafood lovers always find the right places (and maybe we recommended it a lot too), and Ko Ang Seafood is now a bright restaurant and even added Chinese decoration.
Laem Sai Seafood is a local restaurant hidden far away on the east coast of Phuket. The restaurant mostly consists of a vast wooden terrace over the sea or the mud, depending on the tide.
Rimpan Seafood is a small but great Phuket local restaurant hidden in plain sight in the north of Phuket Island, near the bridge that connects the island to the mainland. Thousand people drive past Rimpan each day without realising such a great place sits right here.
Go Benz Phuket has been one of Phuket’s most popular local restaurants for over 15 years. Go Benz served a relatively small choice of noodle soups and rice porridge, and by keeping it focused, they became very good at preparing them.
Khun Jeed Yod Pak Restaurant is an institution in Phuket Town and one of the best local restaurants on the island. It is open as far as I can remember, which is more than 20 years now. It became famous for a dish Thai people love called radna.
Ko Yoon Restaurant is a very small and discreet place serving amazing Hokkien Noodles. If you happen to visit Phuket Town, chances are you walked passed it without noticing it, it looks like any other anonymous local hole-in-the-wall restaurant. But Ko Yoon has prepared those delicious big yellow noodles for decades and locals know how good they are.
Kalim Rim Lay Restaurant is a little-known restaurant serving good honest Thai food and seafood at a good price. Best of all for some of you, it is located not far from Patong Beach, just past Kalim Beach. Rim Lay is a very relaxing spot to enjoy lunch or dinner with spectacular sunsets if you are lucky to get one as we did.
Tu Kab Khao is a popular Thai restaurant in Phuket Town that serves great southern Thai food. Give yourself a chance to try their selection of dishes that are typical of Phuket. Tu Kab Khao received a Michelin rating from the new Michelin Guide for Phuket, a sign of excellent food.
Aek Rawai Seafood Restaurant is one of the few local seafood restaurants peppering the roadside of Rawai Beach. This small restaurant doesn’t have any particular sign and it doesn’t attract a mass of hungry tourists, but this is where we love to go for a real seafood lunch or dinner.
Peang Prai Restaurant (Krua Piang Prai) is an excellent local venue in a green nest next to Bang Pae waterfall. Mostly unknown to tourists because of its remote location, Peang Prai is one of the two great places to have lunch if you happen to be in the area.
Baan Chom View is one of the popular Thai restaurants hanging high above the beautiful beach of Kata Noi in the south of Phuket and serving a vast choice of Thai food and a few western dishes.
Laem Hin Seafood is one of the best-known local seafood restaurants in Phuket. Built mostly on an immense wooden terrace on the east coast of the island, Laem Hin is huge but it can get pretty full on weekdays dinner and even more on weekends.
The Pad Thai Shop is a tiny restaurant on the side of the back road of Karon Beach. It’s so small and modest; you would drive past it without paying much attention if it wasn’t for its growing reputation and a large yellow signboard that says ‘The Pad Thai Shop’.
Kanom Jeen is a traditional Thai breakfast dish that’s particularly popular in Phuket and southern Thailand. It consists of fresh, thin white rice noodles served cold or at room temperature with a curry of your choice. Common options include fish curry (Nam Ya Pa), beef curry (Kang Nua), chicken curry (Kang Kai), or sweet prawn curry (Kang Nam Prik).
Phuket street food is fun, cheap, and a great way to experience simple real Thai food. It definitely is more authentic than in tourist restaurants you find in Patong Beach. It’s fast and a lot cleaner than you might think.
Phuket floating restaurant ‘Kruvit Raft’ is one of the most original ways to enjoy dinner when you get tired of your ‘Same Same but Different’ Thai food restaurant. Try this unusual but popular place floating between Phuket Island’s east coast and Maphrao Island.
Mor Mu Dong is quite an unusual restaurant in Phuket. If you enjoy eating off the beaten tracks where many locals go for a great lunch or dinner, Mor Mu Dong is your place.
Chaiyo Seafood is a simple little restaurant close to Phuket town if you feel like a nice seafood lunch by the mangrove, without getting far from the city. Nicely built in a comfortable setting, Chaiyo Seafood keeps its livestock directly in the mangrove stream.
Eating fried insects in Phuket and Thailand seems to be the ‘ultimate cultural challenge’ for most visitors. How many of you tried these crunchy snacks from street carts? A few. How many actually liked them?
Thanoon Seafood Restaurant is perfect for spending a half-day in a unique location, a breezy place right on the beach of a stunning bay in the very north of Phuket Island. Thanoon Seafood has found itself a little golden spot no one had thought about before: next to the Sarasin Bridge connecting Phuket to the mainland. This small bay benefits from a gentle breeze with amazing views of both the open sea and the new bridge on the other side.
Nai Dam Restaurant in Kathu looks just like any restaurant by the roadside of Phuket. It’s not fancy, there are no exterior signs of luxury and even the restaurant signboard is hardly visible.
What Phuket Phuket Specialities should you try, and where to find them? We already shared our Best Local Restaurants and Best Classic Thai Dishes, so here are 10 really local specialities dishes, or their popular Phuket variation.
There are quite a few Chinese shrines in Phuket, and each has its own characteristics and unique features, which always offer excellent photo opportunities. The large ones are very popular during the Chinese New Year in February or the Phuket Vegetarian Festival in October.
Big Chicken Restaurant (Thung Thong Restaurant) is one of our three favourite venues in Kathu. If you drove past the Phuket Country Club in the past twenty years, you certainly saw that massive chicken statue on the side of the road.
Had enough tourist food and want to try real Phuket specialities? When visiting Phuket Town, if you have a bit of time and are curious about Phuket’s real local food, you have to stop by Lor Rong Market.
Kan Eang at Pier is a trendy seafood restaurant in Chalong Bay on the way to Rawai Beach, in the south of Phuket. Popular since decades, Kan Eang is a relaxing place in the shade of huge trees with a beautiful sea breeze.
Kan Eang 2 is not the most accessible place to find, but it’s one of Phuket’s best local seafood restaurants. Everyone here knows that there are 2 Kan Eang Seafood restaurants on the island.
