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LAST UPDATE: Thursday October 23, 2003

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So much great food: fresh seafood grilled; coconut-based curries; spicy dishes; unusual things; regional cusine from the Northeast; Chiang Mai dips; oysters and crabs... it goes on and on in Thailand...
 

Phuket – it s a real heaven for gourmets
 

Don t come to Thailand hoping or expecting to lose weight Eating on Phuket Island can be one of the memorable pleasures of a holiday here. Thailand is already famed for its creative cuisine and its cheap seafood. With the tourism and hotel boom have come scores of new restaurants, many bringing cuisine from every corner of the country and of the globe. And the standards are high, the prices low. Just to survive more than a year in the highly competitive restaurant business in a food-loving country like Thailand is proof enough of quality.
 

Seafood – fresh and varied
Seafood is at the top of the list for most foreign visitors, and Phuket is heaven for lovers of the fruits of the ocean. Being a major fishing centre, Phuket gets first pick of fresh seafood coming ashore in both local ‘longtail’ boats and trawlers of the high seas. The village-based ‘longtails’ fish for hours each day or night, before returning, so their catch is readily available and prized for freshness.

Seafood caught locally includes a wide variety of fish, prawns, crabs, squid, shark, lobsters and several varieties of shellfish. The Thais are masters in the preparation of all of these, and so Thai-seafood restaurants in Phuket do a booming business. Virtually all of the restaurants relying on tourists also serve seafood, be it Italian-style, German or Vietnamese.

Patong’s myriad restaurants
In Patong, Phuket’s throbbing centre of food shopping and entertainment, the beachfront road is lined by a series of outdoor restaurants specialising in fresh seafood. All have Thai menus, giving the opportunity to choose your fish or crabs or prawns from a boat of ice at the front then ordering it cooked in a variety of Thai styles. Prices in tourist centres like this are naturally higher than in restaurants on other parts of the island where the clientele is largely Thai. If you want to try things truly 100% Thai-style – and that included a lot of chilli – you will need your own transportation and our restaurant list on Chalong and Rawai.

On every beach a feast
But every beach on Phuket has a great choice in restaurants. The hygiene standards are quite high. Those with good ambience – mostly overlooking the ocean – will be the most crowded.