Suay Cherngtalay — Restaurant in Si Sunthon

SUAY is my all-time favorite restaurant, anywhere.

It's the only restaurant where I've tried everything on the menu. And every dish was perfect.

When my Thai girlfriend and I first visited Phuket, during July 2023, we dined at Suay three nights in a row.

On the third night, Chef Noi came to our table, introduced himself, thanked us for coming, and gave me a SUAY membership card for a 10% discount on everything on the menu, including wine and cocktails.

Needless to say, this has never happened to me at any other restaurant, no matter how many times I visited.

The decor is always beautiful and festive, with special decorations for seasonal events like Christmas and Valentine's Day.

The mood is completed by a variety of jazz and French cafe music. There's live music two nights a week.

The menu, a fusion of Thai, French and Japanese, offers more variety than any other restaurant I've visited.

And the staff has ALWAYS treated my girlfriend and me like Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner. In particular, Lily's preparation of bananas flambe is the highlight of the evening.

The cocktails are first class, and SUAY stocks 100 different gins. 100!

Plenty of parking, you can dine indoors or outside in the garden, centrally located in Phuket, high quality, reasonable price.

Why would my girlfriend and I go anywhere else for dinner?

Short answer: We don't.

Highly recommended.

Disclaimer: SUAY is not a traditional Thai restaurant. If that's what you want, go to Raya, which...

Another excellent “must try” dinner place Phuket. We sort of picked this place at random. Phenomenal food and amazing service.

Started off with Crab Cakes and Shrimp on crispy betel leaf. Both were very fun dishes to start off with. The crab cakes were very umami with a subtle aroma of curry cutting through the richness. The vegetables balanced the flavors out quite well. The shrimp on fried betel leaf were just joyful to munch on. The snap of the crispy betel leaf contrasts well with softness of the shrimp. To bring it all together, the dish comes with a viscous sweet sauce.

For the mains we order the braised beef cheek and the signature grilled lamb chop. Both were phenomenal. When eating the braised beef make sure you have the beef, gnocchi, vegetables, masaman sauce and the coriander (that was suppose to just be the garnish) all in one bite. With every chew you will get explosion of tastes and flavors. The lamb. Usually I avoid lamb menus because I do not like gaminess but the chef was be able to dial down the gaminess and use it to work with the smell of char and the saltiness.

We paired all of this with a sav. blanc from Kapuka in Marlborough, New Zealand. It’s a fun and versatile wine. Goes well with seafood and the beef. You can even have it as an aperitif or even pair it...

We visited this esteemed Michelin Bib restaurant to sample their culinary delights.

Opting for Set Menu 1, we anticipated a thoughtfully curated selection. Unfortunately, the experience fell short of expectations.

The set menu comprised three appetizers, a warm soup (very tasty) and two main courses. Regrettably, these dishes were merely selected from the à la carte menu, lacking any distinctive flair. While flavors were pleasantly tasty, the pacing were awkward. Serving three appetizers simultaneously – combining cold and hot dishes – left us uncertain about where to begin. The nicely smoked grilled octopus, in particular, had lost its warmth, suggesting it had been left out for too long. Conversely, the scallop and pomelo salad arrived at the ideal temperature. In hindsight, we would have preferred the tuna tartare as the initial appetizer, given its relatively subtle flavor profile compared to the other 2.

The main courses yielded mixed results. The sous vide duck's sauce failed to complement its Western-style technique, instead introducing an incongruous Asian twist. Thankfully, the pork soup and cod fish dish impressed.

In retrospect, ordering à la carte would have better...