Phuket Town’s culinary attractions
There’s more to the island than beaches, and Hokkien-style noodles is one of them
Phuket is not only a dream destination for those who love sun, sand and sea. The province is also packed with historical and cultural sites in its old town. Many of the roads in the town are lined with Sino-Portuguese style shop houses, some of which have been converted to coffee shops, restaurants and hotels.
You may have already visited the town before, but allow me to introduce you to some places where you can find authentic Phuket food, just like locals.
Phuket food is mostly influenced by the Hokkien Chinese, said Sommai “Ko Tee” Saengongtantikul, a native of Phuket and descendant of a Hokkien Chinese family.
Along with his sister, Ko Tee has run a small shophouse restaurant, Mee Hokkien Ko Tee, selling nothing but Hokkien-style stir-fried noodles, or mee Hokkien, for more than half-a-century. It is located in Soi Ton Pho, next to Ban Bang Nieo Municipal School and not far from Bang Nieo Shrine, one of the largest and oldest Chinese shrines in town.
“My secrete recipe is that I use hoy tib (a tiny oyster, about a 1cm in diameter), which is original to Phuket,” he said.
His restaurant only has six tables, which means that you may sometimes need to share a table with locals.
Original Hokkien noodles are made with thick and soft yellow noodles, not the egg noodle we normally find in noodle food stalls elsewhere. Thick yellow noodles do not have egg, only flour, he said.
Ko Tee slowly cooks each dish by himself, stir-frying chopped shallot with sliced pork, fish, then adding soy sauce, noodles, hoy tib and sliced choy sum leaves, before letting them simmer in pork soup. You may have the noodle with or without egg. The bowl (45 baht) comes served with a small serving of mildly salty soup. Before eating, you just add the chopped shallots and chives and mix them well.
Not far from Ko Tee’s restaurant, you can find o-tao, another Hokkien dish, at O-tao Bang Nieo food stall. At a glance, the dish looks like hoy tod (crispy mussel pancake with bean sprouts), but o-tao is actually made with hoy tib.
According to the food stall owner Sonthaya Mitmuang, “o” means shellfish in Hokkien dialect and “tao” means mixing everything together.
As the name suggests, the dish (45 baht) is made of hoy tib in the mixture of flour and water and fried with small diced sweet taro, beaten egg, sliced chives, soy sauce and chillies.
Before serving, deep fried pork rinds and sliced fried garlic is placed on top. You may add raw bean sprouts before eating this crunchy food. The dish’s sweet taste comes from the taro. It is also a little salty and spicy.
Sonthaya opened her food stall in Takua Thung alley more than three decades ago, using a recipe of her husband’s, who is also a descendant of a Hokkien family.
Phuket people also like having dim sum and one of the most popular and long-established dim sum restaurants is Juan Hiang Dim Sum on Chana Charoen Road.
The small shophouse has only 10 tables and has been serving various types of dim sum for four generations. Once you can find a table, the waiter will deliver all hot dim sum selections (10-35 baht a dish) to you at once. Select the dishes you like and the waiter will take the rest back to the cooking station.
To enjoy Juan Hiang’s dim sum like locals, dip it in the restaurant’s special sweet and sour sauce, which is made of tamarind sauce.
Also popular among locals who like spicy food is khanom chin (tender, spaghetti-like rice noodles) and one of the popular places to have the food is Khanom Chin Pa Mai restaurant located on the T-junction of Satun and Deebuk roads.
The two-block, one-storey shophouse is owned by Pa Mai who has cooked the spicy curry for 55 years.
Her restaurant serves six types of spicy curries, including nam ya pla (spicy curry made from coconut cream and pureed fish meat), nam ya pa (fish curry without coconut cream), nam ya poo (spicy crab curry), kaeng tai pla (extremely spicy curry made from fermented fish innards), chicken curry, nam prik (sweet curry made from pureed beans) and nam chub yam, a special southern style sauce made of spicy shrimp paste mixed with fish, sliced mango, shallot and chillies.
The restaurant lets you serve your own meal. It prepares a plain kanom chin in a dish and you just fill up your preferred curry or mixture of two curries on top (30 baht). You may be amazed with the variety of side dishes available at the table. The eight side dishes include deep fried small fish, pickled garlic and bean sprouts, boiled eggs and various fresh vegetables and sliced pineapple.
The last stop on our tour of Phuket Town dining is Krua Niyom on Rasadanusorn Road. The restaurant has only eight tables, and offers about 70 selections from its menu which the owner Niyom Thanawuttikul, a native to Phuket, said were all local Phuket food.
A must-try dish is moo hong (sliced and stewed pork belly with herbs), which Krua Niyom once served to HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn when she visited many years ago.
Other recommended dishes by the owner are moo pad khoei khem (sliced pork stir-fried with shrimp paste), pad nor mai nam kung (Manchurian wild rice with shrimp) and pla mong si-iew (boiled crevalle jack with soya sauce).
Enjoying the authentic taste of Phuket food in a small, but long-established restaurant is a highlight of exploring the town, especially if you want to avoid popular places where only tourists go.