The mouth-puckering relishes, the brow-beading curries, the irresistibly cute kanom jeeb and the crisp folds of freshly-slapped roti… Phuket has some of the world’s most diverse food at sandy, dusty street level. Here, you’ll eat handsomely for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and feel no guilt about how you pushed your stomach to the brink of explosion. Because, let’s be honest, you know that the explosion allows for more eating later.
But sometimes, just occasionally, the clarion call of a properly barked, blushing steak, flaked salt rather than fish sauce, and a glass of something inky drowns out even the nok ka wow’s dawn chorus. For those times, the island delivers too. With that in mind, here’s where to find the best steak in Phuket.
Wagyu Steakhouse, Surin
Ideal for choosing your cut from the fridge, your knife from the box and your wine from the Coravin…
Phuket has dozens of flash, black card-baiting steakhouses where the beef is flabby, the diners taut and the prices bloated. Wagyu Steakhouse bucks this trend not brashly or boldly, but in a more seductive way, somewhere closer to Bangkok’s suave occasion dining than the thickening sickly sheen of the island. The approach pays off; the restaurant has been listed in the Michelin Guide for the last three years.
Part of the refined Twinpalms Surin Beach resort, the restaurant is elegant and precisely designed: dark wood panelling, plush leather seating, a dimly lit two-storey interior. Upstairs, an Art Deco bar glows with burnished fittings beneath muted lighting. Start here with an Oaxaca Cooler, a sharp, herbaceous mix of tequila, yuzu puree, lime, egg white, cucumber and shiso, then descend, just a touch wobbly, into the bowels of the operation.
Downstairs, the flickering dining room, its floor-to-ceiling windows crowded with monstera peering in from the darkness, opens onto a display fridge of prime cuts and an oyster bar. It’s a space where faces soften, intimate shadows are cast, and you can imagine spies eavesdropping on increasingly loose-lipped conversations.
This is where the ritual begins. You’re led by hand across the room to the fridge. If you prefer to gawp and point rather than read a menu, you can choose your steak now, relying on instinct. Behind the counter, chef Nok (Khanitta Rawangsee) leads an all-female brigade – the “women of wagyu”, as one neighbouring diner neatly put it – gracefully working an imposing Josper charcoal oven and a beechwood grill. The results carry deep, clean smoke without bitterness.
Back at the table, and a box of steak knives from five different renowned bladesmiths is presented so you can choose the right tool for the job, the implication being that you are a man of some discernment and you’ll know just what to do here. It’s a clever touch, but only works because the steak that follows can bear the scrutiny of your decision.
We had a Japanese Miyazaki Wagyu A5 striploin, fatty, rich and creamy white when raw, alongside a USDA Prime Black Angus tenderloin that had been dry-aged to a much darker crust. The former was cooked closer to medium, as it should be, to let the fat properly melt and self-baste the steak. The tenderloin, thick and proud, was served blushing. The difference could not have been more pronounced in two cuts from the same family (not the actual same family, but you know what we mean). Both were superb, the dichotomy the point; one so marbled it melted at 37°C, the other rewarding a bit of chewing (it’s a hard life) with undulating, funky depth.
For those who want to taste even further across the marbling spectrum without committing to a single cut, the Wagyu Discovery Trio offers USDA Prime Black Angus, MB4 and MB8 tenderloins side by side, and at 2,500 baht it is a genuinely cost-effective way in.
Speaking of tasting across the spectrum, a choice of eight sauces includes a nahm jim jaew that nods to the kitchen’s Thai roots, alongside bordelaise, bearnaise, chimichurri and a fresh green peppercorn with brandy. Yes, we can’t remember the other three because the room was dusky and the Sassicaia was flowing. Anyway, we got them all, and what a treat it was to use the chips as cutlery for dredging. Thick cut, not too hard fried, and with a grating of truffle because, well, why not?
The wine list is formidable, running from a glass of Teorema Cabernet Merlot at 490 baht through Ornellaia and Opus One, all the way to Mouton Rothschild at 109,000 baht a bottle, with the Coravin system allowing by-the-glass access to some serious vintages.
End the evening upstairs at the bar, bookending the night with another stiff drink and, if the mood takes you, a Partagás Serie D4 in the outdoor cigar lounge. We’ve established you’re a diner of some discernment by now, after all. Just don’t fall in the hotel pool on your way out.
Steaks from THB 890/100g.
Website: wagyuphuket.com
Address: Twinpalms Phuket Resort, 106/46 Mu 3, Choeng Thale, Thalang, Phuket, 83110, Thailand
Sizzle Rooftop, Patong
Ideal for sunset steaks with uninterrupted Andaman Sea views…
Lodged in the hills above Patong at Avista Hideaway, Sizzle is the sort of place where an evening starts with sunset cocktails and grazing plates and ends three hours later with a theatrical limoncello you had no intention of ordering.
It is the views, first and foremost, that keep you here for so long: expansive, rare uninterrupted panoramas over the Andaman Sea towards the horizon, the kind you never want to leave. The dining room behind you is totally open, no walls, the sea breeze doing the necessary cooling. Exquisite.
But the views disappear into the sunset – they always do – so the food and vibe need to be good enough to keep you enthralled. On the latter note, Simona is a wonderful host, warm but subtle, and she sets the tone for the whole experience. The food side of the bargain is covered by chef Alvaro Puerta, from Almería, who brings a certain Spanish swagger to the menu, threaded through in ways that feel innate: Iberico croquetas with 24-month ham and aioli, a particularly lucid gazpacho, and a way with grilled fish that carries the confidence of someone raised on the Mediterranean coast.
All this light, bright foreplay gives the main event room to breathe. We went for the Australian Black Angus ribeye, and it arrived with nothing but a puck of garlic butter melting over it and a little rectangle of deep-fried polenta. A brave move to keep things so unadorned, but it let the beef do the talking; a gorgeous steak, dry-aged until touching on that funky, blue-cheese territory that only serious aging achieves.
For those seeking more spectacle (views not enough for ya?), a 1.4kg Black Angus tomahawk serves two to three and requires advance ordering when you take your seat. Sauces include blue cheese gorgonzola, bearnaise, bordelaise and a Japanese BBQ glaze, if you do want to jazz things up, but sometimes it’s nice to just let the quality of the product shine. In this instance, the view, the steak, and a limoncello that for some reason is billowing over dry ice are providing more than enough to feast on. Drink it all in.
Steaks from THB 2,200.
Website: sizzlerooftopphuket.com
Address: Avista Hideaway Patong, 39/9 Muen-Ngern Rd, Tambon Patong, Amphoe Kathu, Phuket 83150, Thailand
Five Olives, Bang Tao
Ideal for a Fred Flintstone Fiorentina when the group can’t agree on a steakhouse…
Five Olives is not a steakhouse, let’s be clear. It is a Michelin Guide-listed Italian restaurant in Bang Tao, ranked in the Top 50 Pizzerias in Asia-Pacific for three consecutive years and, just recently, at its highest-ever position of number 26 in the 2026 ranking. It also does fantastic pasta. Hey, maybe Five Olives doesn’t even know what it is?
It’s all things to all people, is what it is, and does it all very capably indeed. Founded by chef Korn Kantapat Sinpradit and his sister Khun Kwang, the restaurant occupies an elegant space in the Boat Avenue Park and Playground complex, about 700 metres from bustling Boat Avenue. The space has high ceilings and a large outdoor terrace where the massive fans are always spinning, and sits just far enough from Boat Avenue to feel like a breath of fresh air. Khun Korn also runs the sister restaurant Marni, which shares the same pizza pedigree, equally as beloved for its Canotto-style Neapolitan pizza with those signature puffy, blistered rims.
But it’s the charcoal-grilled Fiorentina steak that we’re at Five Olives for. A close to 2kg cut served with roast potatoes, corn salad and beef jus, it is, quite simply, one of the best things you can eat on the island if your mind has turned to purposefully rare beef and no amount of gaeng massaman neua can pull you back in the other direction.
The Italian approach to steak, letting the quality of the cut do the work with minimal intervention, is at odds with the sauce-driven hotel steakhouses you’ll find more of in Phuket, and it’s all the better for it. There are a couple of other steaks on the menu too, a Black Angus picanha, a ribeye and a charcoal-grilled tenderloin, all served with homemade green sauce, but the Fred Flintstone, comically large Fiorentina is without doubt the one. A glass of Nero d’Avola from Sicily at 350 baht is the right companion.
If you have a group that cannot agree on a steakhouse, Five Olives is the diplomatic choice: the steak lovers get their Fiorentina, everyone else gets some of the best Italian food on the island, and nobody compromises.
Steaks from THB 990.
Website: fiveolives.co
Address: 2/1 Cherngtalay, Thalang District, Phuket 83110, Thailand
Read: The best Italian restaurants in Phuket
Char’d Grill, Karon
Ideal for ditching your shoes & dining with your feet in the pool…
Voted Asia’s Best New Hotel Restaurant 2024 at the World Culinary Awards, Char’d (part of the Avista Grande Karon) bills itself as a first-of-its-kind, dine-in-water steakhouse and seafood grill with flame-to-table gastronomy. Their words, not ours, and a hell-of-a-lot of hyphens, too. Pedantry aside, the trepidation is real: you take your shoes off, lower your feet into the pool, and wonder if this is going to be a bit, whisper it, naff?
But a cool current comes in from the sea, something close to giddiness sets in, and by the time the menu hits the table you’re kicking and splashing like a carefree kid. It sets the tone: this is a restaurant that wants you to have fun and, it turns out, eat well too. At Char’d, everything centres around a Kopa charcoal grill oven, and you can taste the smoke in every cut. You can smell it too, floating out across the swimming pool and seasoning the air, senses getting discombobulated like synaesthesia as you’re ankle deep in water and the Sea Breeze goes to your head.
Working that grill is Chef Nair, who has cooked his way through India, Dubai, Ireland and beyond, and the accumulated mileage shows in a menu that leans Californian, with a surf-and-turf energy that ties the whole thing together succinctly. That means that Phuket lobster and imported premium steak share equal billing and there’s a fair amount of theatrics, which is all good once you’ve succumbed to the frivolity of it all.
The steak itself, an Australian Black Angus ribeye, had perfect cuisson, and you really taste the charcoal. It is paired with a thick, almost emulsified chimichurri and a viscous peppercorn sauce. Both are good, but neither are really needed, the steak buttery enough to be its own thing without accoutrement.
In all honesty, rules had gone out the window by this stage (we’re dining in a swimming pool here!) and an expertly made lobster bisque became the dipping sauce of choice: deep, rich, and without a hint of sucking a two-pence piece. Gorgeous.
The fun doesn’t end with your feet in the water. Sword-like steak knives are laid ceremoniously from a wooden box at your table. A paloma infused with local aromatics arrives in a particularly massive khan, an ornate Thai ceremonial bowl, and looks gorgeous. On Tuesdays and Fridays, the space is lit up with a live fire dance show. Shackles off, it took a heroic act of restraint not to dive in by the end of the meal.
Steaks from THB 1,599.
Website: avistagrandephuketresort.com
Address: 38 Soi, Luang Phor Chuan Rd, Karon, Phuket 83100, Thailand
Smokestack BBQ & Grill, Patong
Ideal for American-style smoked brisket, low-and-slow barbecue, and a showboating tomahawk…
Smokestack sits directly across from Patong Beach at the Courtyard by Marriott, and it is doing something different to every other restaurant on this list. This is American-style barbecue done with an admirable conviction: fruit wood-smoked meats, low-and-slow cooking, house rubs, and a chef, Christopher Tuthill, who graduated from the California Culinary Academy and has spent years between San Francisco and Hong Kong honing his approach to butchering, curing, smoking and grilling.
The massive, element-beaten smoker outside the semi-open kitchen, the haze of hickory that drifts all the way out to sea and catches the nose of sunbathers like a freshly baked apple pie on a windowsill, the cornbread served with a beef tallow candle: it all signals a place that takes its smokehouse credentials seriously.
The reason Smokestack earns its place here is the 240-day grain-fed Angus beef brisket, which is superb: deeply smoky, yielding, with a bark that has real bite to it, served with house pickles and a choice of signature sauces including a Carolina-style vinegar and an Alabama white. A wedge salad with iceberg, bacon, cherry tomatoes and blue cheese dressing cuts through the richness and a glass of Chianti Classico Gran Selezione at 950 baht is a worthy match for the smoke.
For those after something more classically steak-shaped, the charcoal-cooked section offers a grain-fed Australian ribeye and an Angus tenderloin, both served with a side dish and thyme or pepper jus. The grain-fed flank steak at 870 baht is a steal. And the wagyu tomahawk, a 1.4kg showpiece at MBS 7, is here for the table that wants all the stragglers on Thaweewong Road to admire their massive bone.
Hmmm, not sure why we went there quite honestly…
Steaks from THB 740.
Website: smokestackbbqandgrillphuket.com
Address: 44 Thaweewong Rd, Pa Tong, Phuket, 83150, Thailand
Benny’s Cocktails & Grill, Bang Tao
Ideal for a candlelit steak night with live jazz…
Founded in 2015 by Benedikt De Bellis, an Italian who has lived on Phuket long-term after a career in luxury hotel and restaurant hospitality across Europe and Asia, Benny’s sits at the southern end of Bang Tao Beach, away from the resort cluster. The inspiration comes from the American bars of London that thrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: warm, convivial, candlelit garden tables beneath tropical greenery, a place where staff remember your name by the second visit.
The steak menu is tightly edited. A dry-aged Black Angus cowboy steak, marbling score 3 and aged 30 days, serves four to six and needs 40 minutes on the grill for medium-rare, so order it with intent. The pure-breed Wagyu ribeye, dry-aged 20 days, is recommended rare to medium-rare and delivers rich, buttery flavour. There’s a grass-fed tenderloin for those after something leaner. All steaks arrive with fresh salad and peppercorn sauce – and by this stage we’ve got to say, it’s quite nice to have the paradox of choice removed sometimes.
The tableside Caesar salad and steak tartare, both prepared with a fair amount of flamboyance, are signature moves worth ordering for the spectacle as much as the eating. Wednesday is steak night, paired with live jazz from 7pm. Dinner and a show, indeed.
Steaks from THB 1,120.
Website: bennysphuket.com
Address: 5/6 Soi Had Bangtao cherngtalay, Thalang District, Phuket 83110, Thailand
Best Thai Beef Steakhouse, Phuket Old Town
Ideal for a fairly-priced taste of Thai beef in Phuket Old Town…
Firstly, cap doffed to the name on this one. But you’ll be pleased to hear there is substance behind the search-engine bait. Sitting on Dibuk Road in ever-gorgeous Phuket Old Town, opposite Wat Mongkol Nimit and a short walk from the photogenic Romanee Street, Best Thai Beef occupies a characterful old house with a weathered wooden facade that are ten a penny in the old town, but elsewhere would be a total selfie-magnet. Inside, a long and welcoming dining room is half-occupied by an open kitchen, and the first thing the chef will do is walk you to the front display fridge. Well, you might as well play your hand early in situations like this, no?
The focus here is Thai Wagyu, a crossbreed of Japanese and Australian wagyu from the northeast of Thailand, presented in both standard and dry-aged options. Cuts are scored by marbling and priced per 100 grams, so you can scale up or down depending on appetite and budget. A 500g New York steak, marbling score 2-3 and aged 45 days, is cooked judiciously, pink throughout, tender, with a clean beefy flavour uncluttered by heavy saucing. The dry-aged rib eye and T-bone are also worth considering, and the dry-aged bacon fried rice offers a different accompaniment to another Caesar salad.
This is not a place that trades on glamour or ceremony. It is a good steak restaurant at prices that feel fair for the quality, in a neighbourhood that rewards a post-dinner walk through some of Phuket’s most handsome streets. You know what? We might wander off now, we’ve had enough of your company.
Steaks from around THB 300/100g.
Facebook: @bestthaibeefphuket
Address: 5 83000 Phuket Rd, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Putting the surf in, erm, surf and turf, join us as we check out the best places for seafood in Phuket next.
