What to Eat in Phuket and Southern Thailand

Most visitors to southern Thailand come for the beaches, and many never eat beyond the resort menus. That is a shame, because the south has one of the most distinctive cuisines in the country. It is the region of fresh turmeric, salty fermented fish, serious chilli heat and a long trading history that brought Chinese, Malay and Muslim cooking into the mix.

Phuket is the obvious starting point, with a food culture all its own. From there, the curries, rice salads and breakfasts of the wider south are worth seeking out in towns along both coasts.

Phuket's Peranakan heritage

Phuket grew rich on tin. In the nineteenth century large numbers of Hokkien Chinese came to work in and run the mines, and many married into local Thai and Malay families. Their descendants, known as Baba or Peranakan, developed a culture that blended Chinese, Malay and Thai traditions, much like the Peranakan communities of Penang and Malacca.

Phuket Old Town is where this history is easiest to see. Its streets, including Thalang Road and Soi Romanee, are lined with colourful Sino-Portuguese shophouses, and many of the island's oldest restaurants, coffee shops and noodle shops are found here. Phuket was named a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy in 2015, largely in recognition of this food heritage.

Moo hong, mee hokkien and other Baba dishes

Moo hong is the dish most associated with Phuket's Peranakan kitchens. Pork belly is braised slowly with garlic, plenty of black pepper, soy sauce and sugar until it is meltingly soft and coated in a dark, glossy sauce. It is rich, savoury and peppery rather than chilli-hot, and is eaten with plain rice.

Mee hokkien is Phuket's best-known noodle dish: thick yellow egg noodles stir-fried with pork, seafood, greens and egg, in a style that traces back to Hokkien cooking. Other Baba dishes to look for include:

Lo bak, five-spice pork rolls wrapped in bean curd skin and deep-fried, served with a sweet dipping sauce.
O-tao, a sticky fried dish of small oysters, taro and egg, topped with crisp pork crackling.
Nam prik kung siap, a chilli dip made with smoked dried prawns, eaten with fresh vegetables.
Peranakan sweets, many of them made from sticky rice, coconut and pandan.

Breakfast in Phuket: dim sum and khanom jeen

Phuket takes breakfast seriously. Dim sum shops open early, and families sit around tables covered in small steamer baskets of dumplings, buns, stuffed tofu and fish balls, with pots of tea or strong local coffee. The style is closer to Hokkien and Malaysian coffee shop breakfasts than to the Cantonese dim sum served in big cities.

The other great Phuket breakfast is khanom jeen, fermented rice noodles served with a choice of curries such as a fish curry with coconut milk or a sour yellow curry. The noodles come with a generous table of side dishes and fresh vegetables, pickles and herbs that you help yourself to, and it is a filling, cheap way to start the day.

The southern curries

Away from Phuket's Chinese-influenced kitchens, southern curries are some of the most intense in Thailand. Their pastes are built on dried and fresh chillies, garlic, shallots, shrimp paste and lots of fresh turmeric, which gives them their colour and earthy taste. Coconut milk appears in some, but many are thin and sharp.

Three are worth knowing:

Gaeng som, also called gaeng lueang (yellow curry): a sour, thin, turmeric-yellow curry, usually with fish and vegetables such as green papaya, bamboo shoot or morning glory. It is soured with tamarind or sour fruits and is very hot.
Gaeng tai pla: a pungent curry made with tai pla, salted and fermented fish innards, cooked with vegetables such as pumpkin, aubergine, bamboo shoot and long beans. It is one of the most strongly flavoured dishes in Thai cooking.
Khua kling: minced pork or beef dry-fried with a fierce curry paste and makrut lime leaves until there is no sauce left at all. It is eaten in small amounts with plenty of rice.

Why southern food is the hottest

Southern food has a reputation as the spiciest in the country, and it usually lives up to it. The curry pastes use generous amounts of chilli, and black pepper adds a second layer of heat to many dishes. Sugar is used sparingly, so there is less sweetness to soften the burn.

The answer at the table is vegetables. Southern meals almost always come with a large plate of raw and blanched greens, herbs, cucumbers, young leaves and beans, eaten between mouthfuls to cool the mouth. Sator beans, also called stink beans, are a southern favourite, either raw on that plate or stir-fried with shrimp paste and prawns. If the heat is too much, asking for less chilli (phet noi) is entirely normal.

Khao yam, roti and Hat Yai fried chicken

Khao yam is the south's rice salad and one of its most refreshing dishes. Cooked rice, sometimes tinted blue with butterfly pea flowers, is topped with small heaps of shredded herbs and lemongrass, makrut lime leaf, bean sprouts, pomelo, toasted grated coconut, dried shrimp and chilli. Everything is mixed with budu, a sweetened southern fermented fish sauce, just before eating.

The south also has large Muslim communities, particularly towards the Malaysian border, and their food is everywhere. Roti is the clearest example: flaky flatbread cooked on a hot griddle, eaten at breakfast with a bowl of curry or late at night as a sweet snack with condensed milk, sugar or banana. It is often served with strong, sweet pulled tea.

Hat Yai, the largest city in Songkhla province, gives its name to one of the country's best-known fried chickens. Gai tod Hat Yai is marinated with garlic and spices, fried until deeply golden and topped with a heap of crispy fried shallots. It is usually eaten with sticky rice and a sweet chilli sauce, and it is sold far beyond the south.

Eating your way through the south takes a little courage, especially with the curries. The reward is food with a character all its own: bright, sour, salty and fierce, balanced with cooling herbs, and shaped by centuries of trade around the peninsula.