One More Day in
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Its own cuisine, not generic Thai. And the best free half day on the island.
Some of our favourites
Phuket cooks Peranakan and Hokkien — trading families from Fujian settled here generations ago and the food never stopped being theirs. What follows is a handful we would send our own friends to, weighted towards the Old Town because that is where the good cheap eating is. There are hundreds more. Tell us what you like and we will point you at the ones near where you are staying.
At the old Clock Circle, and open since 1946. Hokkien noodles in a brown gravy with pork, seafood and egg. If you eat one thing in Phuket, this is a strong candidate.
Old-Phuket cooking in an old Phuket shophouse on Thalang Road — hokkien fried noodles and moo hong, in a room that has not been redesigned for anybody.
Closed Sundays, which catches people out on the one day they are already in the Old Town for the market.
An old-school covered food court where the Phuket specialities are all in one place. The most efficient way to try four or five local things in one sitting without committing to a full plate of each.
A late-night rice-soup institution in Talat Nuea. Where you go after the market, not instead of it.
Congee, Thai sweets and roti mataba among the fresh-produce stalls. The most authentic cheap breakfast on the island, and then it is over.
A century-old mansion on Dibuk Road and the Old Town’s best-known restaurant. Crab curry with rice noodles is what people order. A step up in price from everything else on this page and worth it once.
Buy your seafood from the stalls on one side of the road, carry it across, and a restaurant cooks it. One of the genuinely great things to do here.
It is sold per kilo on the stall’s own scales. Watch the weighing, and settle the cooking charge separately.
Sino-Portuguese shophouses along Thalang Road, the pastel lane at Soi Romanee, street art everywhere. A free electric shuttle loops the quarter every fifteen minutes from 11am to 10pm.
Wherever you are staying there will be somewhere within walking distance cooking properly for a fraction of what it costs at home. Pork skewers, pad thai, pad kra pao with pork and egg, grilled seafood.
Dishes worth hunting down: mee hokkien, moo hong, o taw (oyster omelette with taro), oh aew (shaved ice with banana-seed jelly), kanom jeen and a-pong. Opening hours move about here more than anywhere — treat all of this as a strong steer rather than a guarantee, and check before you travel across the island for one place.
What to eat, and where.
Not generic Thai. Phuket cooks Peranakan and Hokkien — the food of the Chinese families who came for the tin mines. Moo hong, hokkien mee, and the crab curry with rice noodles that people go to Raya for.
Mee Ton Poe has been going since 1946. Kopitiam by Wilai on Thalang Road does moo hong and hokkien mee and closes on Sundays. Lock Tien is a food court where you order several dishes from different stalls in one stop, which is a good first day.
Yes, and it is cooked in front of you, which is more than you can say for most restaurant kitchens anywhere. Go where there is a queue of Thai people and you will not go wrong.
Buy it at the market, then take it to one of the restaurants behind to have it cooked. Go around half eleven, and agree the weight and the price before anything is weighed.
Only Raya, and particularly at weekends. Everywhere else on this page you walk into.
