The island of Phuket is a place of wild, clashing contradiction. There’s the brash and bawdy Phuket depicted in popular culture, localised on Patong Beach, where you can buy anything, do anything and get yourself into all manner of scrapes, some very silly, some very serious; a microcosm of an image of Thailand we hope is soon confined to the past.
Then there is the striking natural beauty of the island, the forty pristine beaches and the serene, multicultural Old Town, with its colourful Sino Portuguese architecture, Chinese temples and shrines, and unique cuisine representative of this rich diversity.
Oh, the food; a truly glorious amalgamation of the island’s heritage and celebratory of its inherent contrasts, with Chinese, Malaysian, Singaporean and Muslim influences abound. So, if you’re visiting Phuket, skip the sleaze and instead dive into a world of culinary curiosity; here’s where to eat in Phuket Old Town.
A word of warning: Phuket is arguably the breakfast capital of the world, and eating well here means setting an alarm. The island’s best dim sum, roti and kanom jin spots are heaving by 7am and sold out by mid-morning. Raya and One Chun are great for lunch, while Royd and Heh are more special occasion dinner options, though both open for lunch at weekends. Always check opening hours on Google before heading out, and have a backup in mind; many of these places close without warning from time to time.
Roti Taew Nam
In Phuket Old Town you’ll see (and hear!) skilled chefs slapping roti on street corners, some cooking over charcoal, some over gas flame. They’re served all day out of polystyrene boxes that seem to add to the seasoning for some inexplicable reason. But even better is an early morning in a sticky shophouse, where a traditional breakfast of roti with a small side bowl of heady, aromatic curry sauce goes down. Whether you add an over-easy egg is up to you. We do. Equally popular is a sweet version, with banana and condensed milk. The one constant is the flaky, layered pastry and crispness guaranteed by the chef’s commitment to cooking things to order.
Roti Taew Nam has been doing its thing for generations, and it remains one of the Old Town’s finest examples of the form. A meal where you utter “breakfast of champions” without a hint of irony. Enjoy with a sweet coffee and perhaps an extra order of mataba, a stuffed roti of shallots, chicken and aromatic spicing. Open only from 7am until midday, daily.
Address: 6 Thep Krasattri Rd, Tambon Talat Yai, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Nom Jeen Phuket
Roti and curry for breakfast not your thing (who are you)? Then it’s time to try Phuket’s other famous breakfast; kanom jin noodles. These thin fermented rice noodles, delicate and giving, are enjoyed all over Thailand, but in Phuket they’re most often taken in the early morning, served cold with a selection of small bowls containing all sorts of goodies.
Spicy curry sauces rich with coconut cream are omnipresent, but you’ll also find a generous amount of vegetables native to Southern Thailand too, such as bitter beans and man pu leaves.
Nom Jeen Phuket occupies a beautiful colonial style building around 1km northeast of the Old Town, and serves one of the finest versions on the island. Open from 7am until after lunch.
Address: 63/14 Rumpattana Rd, Ratsada, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Khanom Chin Pa Mai
Right in the centre of town, Khanom Chin Pa Mai is another excellent place to get your kanom jin fix. The same cold rice noodles, the same spread of curries and sides, and the convenience of being slap bang in the Old Town itself.
Open from 6:30am until 1pm.
Address: V9PP+J4G, Talat Nuea, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Mee Ton Poe
With origins in China’s Fujian province, a bowl of hokkien noodles is the quintessential Phuket lunch. Egg noodles with a little bite and bounce are served over a rich, deep ‘gravy’ and, generally, seafood, pork and veggies. The optional soft boiled egg enriches further, and adding fish balls will certainly do no harm at all. The centrally located Mee Ton Poe has a fanatical following and is always busy with Thais and farangs alike. A surefire sign that they’re doing something right.
Address: 214, 7-8 Phuket Rd, Tambon Talat Yai, Muang, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Kota Khao Man Gai
It sounds simple, perhaps even too simple, but Phuket’s khao man gai – chicken fat rice, essentially Thailand’s take on Hainanese chicken rice – is a brilliant example of how a few ingredients, cooked with care, can be so much more than the sum of its parts.
The chicken is poached and tender, every grain of rice is lightly graced with chicken fat, and alongside is a sauce of soy, ginger and chilli and a little chicken broth, too. After all the curries, it’s a real stomach settler, and is comforting, nourishing and most importantly, delicious.
Kota Khao Man Gai, a very brief stroll from Mee Ton Poe, arguably serves the island’s definitive version.
Address: 16-18 Soi Surin, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Raya Restaurant
Raya opened in 1994, long before Phuket Old Town had become the dining destination it is today. Madam Rose’s family recipes have been served out of this grand old mansion on Dibuk Road ever since, and the restaurant’s success has spawned sister spots One Chun and Chomchan in Phuket, as well as a second Raya in Bangkok. Some regulars will tell you the quality has dipped slightly as the fame has grown, and that One Chun now edges it on the food, but Raya remains essential.
The moo hong – sweet, super tender pork belly – hails from Phuket but its flavour profile owes much to the Chinese settlers in the region. There’s tons of black pepper in the braise, as well as soy sauces both light and dark, and oyster sauce too. A big part of the restaurant group’s success is down to this amazing bowl, their version’s recipe a secret and such a fine take on a southern classic. You’ll see it on every table.
Address: 48/1 Dibuk Rd, Tambon Talat Yai, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
One Chun
Named after the day its owner was born – ‘wan chan’ means Monday in Thai – One Chun is Raya’s sister restaurant, opened some fifteen years later by Madam Rose’s niece, Khun Prang. It occupies a heritage shophouse on Thepkrasattri Road, decked out with vintage radios, old clocks and black-and-white television sets; the retro decor is Khun Prang’s tribute to her grandmother, whose recipes still form the backbone of the menu. It’s a livelier, younger counterpart to Raya, with lower prices and a Michelin Bib Gourmand.
Fresh crab is big news in Phuket, and the amount of the stuff in One Chun’s yellow crab curry feels downright philanthropic. In England, being this liberal with the crab would bankrupt a restaurant. Here, it’s standard. The gaeng som, served stylishly in a brass wok, is a textbook version, too.
Address: 48, 1 Thep Krasattri Rd, Talat Yai, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Chuan Chim
Chuan Chim is one of Phuket’s oldest food shops, and has been feeding Phuket Town for over 70 years, the initial clientele entirely local, now the split closer to 50/50. The room on Montri Road is plain and the service is brisk, but the wok cooking is serious – everything to order, fast and smoky. Like One Chun, Phuket’s superb fresh crab features heavily; the crab and curry powder stir fry is the dish to order, but the deep-fried squid with garlic and pepper and the pad krapow are both strong. Cheap, too, though you’ll be footing a laundry bill after; every guest leaves thoroughly seasoned with charcoal here.
Address: 37/3 Montri Rd, Tambon Talat Yai, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Roti Chaofa
Not quite Old Town, but well worth the detour to East Chaofa Road. Around a third of Phuket’s population is Muslim, descended largely from Malay traders who crossed from Kedah and the peninsula, and their contribution to the island’s food is enormous; roti, massaman, satay and khao mok gai all come from this tradition. Roti Chaofa is one of its finest expressions. This Thai-Muslim roti shop has been open since the 1980s, getting through over 10kg of dough a day, each roti stretched thin on the grill in a style closer to Malaysian roti canai.
The Roti Chaofa sign is in Thai only; you can walk past it without knowing you’re there. But once you’re inside, it goes on for ages, a long, narrow dining room with a chaotic energy and humidity levels somehow even higher than the taxi we took here, the one with broken aircon.
It’s the curries that make enduring that heat an actual pleasure. The goat curry is extraordinary, rich, deeply spiced, the meat gnarly, gristly and perfect too. The chicken massaman is tangy and sweet, not like the cloying ones in fancier venues up the road. And the roti is the vessel for everything. On the way in, buy some of the fried chicken from the lady out front; she runs her own operation, separate from the restaurant, and it’s not to be missed. Wash it all down with one of their sweet milky coffees. Get there early; popular dishes sell out according to the mood of the room, it’s cash only, and they close by 1.30pm.
Plenty of caveats, but worth every one of them.
Address: 44 E Chaofah Rd, Tambon Talat Nuea, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Por Pia Sod at Lock Tien Food Court
Por pia sod – fresh spring rolls – are one of the great Hokkien-style snacks of the Old Town. Soft rice paper is stuffed with braised pork, red pork, tofu and bean sprouts, then topped with a sweet and savoury sauce that ties the whole thing together. They’re cheap, they’re quick, and they’re the kind of thing you can eat three of before you’ve decided whether to sit down.
Lock Tien Food Court, Phuket’s oldest and most storied food court, is the place to try them. The spring roll stall here has been making them for generations, the recipe passed down through the family along with the rest of Lock Tien’s Hokkien specialities. The food court relocated from its original spot at the Dibuk-Yaowarat intersection to new premises on Bangkok Road in 2025, but the same family, the same recipes, and the same loyal crowd followed it south. Open 9am to 5pm daily.
Address: 59/14 Bangkok Rd, Tambon Talat Nuea, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Kanom Jeen Mae Ting
A long-established kanom jin restaurant on Satun Road and one of the best places on the island to eat this dish. Mae Ting is a relative of the Pa Mai kanom jeen shop just down the same road (and just up this same article); between them, the family has been feeding this stretch for decades.
The format is classic: cold fermented rice noodles at the counter, a spread of curries to choose from (crab, chicken, fish belly, and for the brave, kaeng tai pla, a pungent fermented fish innard curry that’s pure Southern Thai) and a generous side platter of fresh vegetables – bitter beans, man pu leaves, long beans, pickled veg, sliced pineapple. The pastes and noodles are made fresh daily. The gravies are deliberately thin; it’s the vegetables that make the dish, and finding the right combination of leaves and pickles at your table is half the point. Get there before 9am for the best selection; past 10, ingredients start running out.
Address: 63 Satun Rd, Tambon Talat Nuea, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Boonrat Dim Sum
Phuket’s most famous dim sum restaurant, and a proper Old Town institution. Boonrat has been here for more than a century, four generations of the same family, the original recipes brought from mainland China and adapted over time to suit Phuket tastes.
The queues out front every morning speak volumes and it’s hard to walk past without joining, even before you know what you’re queuing for. Students fuelling up before school, old men reading newspapers over tea, whole families getting their morning fix; everyone’s here and it’s all democratic in the sense everyone has to wait in line longer than they’d expect
Once you’re through, choose your dishes from the steamer at the front that contains up to 50 different items daily, starting at around 13 baht a piece, sit down, and they bring them to your table. The dim sum is Thai-Chinese Phuket style rather than Hong Kong style: smaller, more delicate, with a distinctive thick, sweet and spicy tamarind dipping sauce – ‘nam choi’ – that marks the style. Go for the steamed pork and shrimp dumplings, the seaweed-wrapped minced pork, and the rice noodle rolls. The jok (Thai-style congee) is excellent too.
Opens as early as 5.30am and often sells out by mid-morning. There are now three branches; the original on Bangkok Road is the Old Town one.
Address: 26 41 Bangkok Rd, Tambon Talat Nuea, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Heng Heng
A Phuket Town dim sum and breakfast spot on Vichit Songkram Road serving Thai-Chinese staples including dim sum, jok and a solid range of fried and steamed dishes. Less hectic than Boonrat and the staff speak good English, which helps at 7am when you’ve come to dust off the previous night’s excesses. Speaking of which, the real draw at Heng Heng is the bak kut teh – a brooding, peppery, herbal pork and mushroom broth earthy enough to match whatever state you arrive in. A good hangover has met its equal here.
Interestingly, the lovely Hotel Verdigris on Yaorawat Road where these pictures are taken includes those last three places in its unique, hugely impressive breakfast a la carte – dim sum from Boonrat, kanom jeen from Mae Ting, bak kut teh from Heng Heng – brought in by the staff each morning and laid out on a long table in a sunlit room. It’s a ridiculously civilised way to eat your way through Phuket’s breakfast culture without having to put your make-up on and leave the building. Which, when considering that hangover from the last paragraph you’re nursing, makes this one sound even better.
Address: 88/4 Vichitsongkram Rd, Tambon Talat Nuea, เมือง Phuket 83000, Thailand
Jejai Dim Sum
Another strong dim sum option. Jejai does excellent steamed buns with a choice of eight fillings; fried crab roll is the standout. A bit further from the Old Town centre, near the bus station, but well worth seeking out, and actually a more pleasant place to chill and take your time over your impossibly cute kanom jeeb as a result.
There’s a display fridge of dim sum and a singular chicken feet soup out front. Simply take some tongs, select what you want and carry it back to your table. The server will tot up your bill at the end according to how many bowls are on your table. How simple is that??
Address: Phoonpon Rd, Tambon Talat Nuea, Muang, Phuket 83000, Thailand
A Pong Mae Sunee
A street food stall with a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and all it makes is one thing: khanom a pong, a traditional Phuket coconut crepe. The family has in this spot for over 50 years, and it’s a credit to them that they’re not bored stiff yet. Perhaps they’re egged on by just how good the offcuts are here. The batter (rice flour, coconut milk, sugar, egg yolk, yeast) is cooked in tiny woks over charcoal, producing something crispy on the outside, soft and sweet and gooey within, and just five baht a piece. It’s probably the cheapest Michelin listed bite in the world.
A word of advice: eat these as soon as they’re cool enough. After even half an hour, they’ve lost their lustre. Fresh is best, baby!
Address: Soi Soon Utis, Tambon Talat Nuea, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Royd
Phuket’s best special occasion Thai restaurant, bar none. At Royd, Southern Thai food gets the fine dining treatment from chef Mond, a Phuket-born chef whose cooking draws on his family’s roots in the region and a serious classical training that he wears lightly. Tasting menus of six to eight courses, seasonal and local, served to just 20 people.
The food is technically ambitious but never clinical with it – this is spicy, sour, punchy southern Thai cooking that happens to arrive in formats you weren’t expecting. Royd is featured in the Michelin Guide (there are rumours of a star incoming), and Chef Mond won the Michelin Young Chef Award earlier this year. There’s so much more to come from this place.
You can read our whole review of Royd here.
Address: 95 Dibuk Rd, Tambon Talet Nuea, Mueang, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Website: restaurantroyd.com
Toh Daeng (Old Town)
Just next door is Toh Daeng. The Old Town sister restaurant of the fantastic Toh Daeng at Baan Ar Jor, a heritage mansion up at Mai Khao Beach where the family grows its own ingredients on the surrounding farmland.
This Dibuk Road outpost is a passion project of Khun Todd, the owner’s grandson, and carries the same striking dark red colour scheme (toh daeng means ‘red table’). The food draws from the family’s 100-year-old recipes, cooked with locally sourced, organic ingredients and boasting an undeniable freshness and verve, shown with most clarity in a simple stir-fry of cabbage, baby shrimp and fish sauce.
The crispy noodles with prawns in tamarind is a signature, and the asam pedas, a sour fish curry, riffs on Phuket’s relationship with Penang. It’s unlike anything else in town. The whole operation runs as a social enterprise: half the profits fund education, housing and healthcare for children in the family’s home community of Mai Khao. What’s not to love here?
Address: 97 Dibuk Rd, Talat Nuea, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Go Benz
The place for a late-night bowl of something fortifying in Phuket, Go Benz is a big open-air roadside canteen on Krabi Road just north of the Old Town centre that fills up before its 5pm opening time and stays packed until 1.30am.
As with the very best Thai street food places, it’s a microcosm of the neighbourhood; families having a jovial supper at 6, post-party crowds at midnight eking the last splashes of fun from the evening, delivery riders idling outside, couples in the first throes of romance trying to slurp impossibly slippery noodles seductively…
The thing to order is the kuay jab, scrolls of silky rolled rice noodle in a peppery, deeply porky bone broth that you will think about for days. It thinks about you for days, too, lingering on the t-shirt you wore to eat it. The khao tom haeng is the other signature, built from the same parts (crispy pork belly, minced pork, offal, fried garlic) but served over rice with the broth on the side. Either way, you’ll want to order a couple of supplementary rounds of crispy pork (moo krob) with sweet soy sauce before it sells out, which happens most nights. Closed Mondays.
Address: V9MM+V2W, Krabi, Tambon Talat Nuea, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Blue Elephant Phuket Cooking School & Restaurant
Blue Elephant occupies the Phra Pitak Chinpracha Mansion, built in 1903 by a Chinese tin baron who made his fortune during Phuket’s mining boom and modelled the place on the grand houses of Penang. It sat empty and crumbling for decades before a two-year restoration, overseen by the Thai Fine Arts Department, turned it into what it is now: mustard-yellow Sino-Portuguese grandeur, Italian floor tiles, feng shui bones, banyan trees older than the building. Chef Nooror Somany Steppe, who founded the Blue Elephant chain in Brussels in the 1980s with her Belgian husband, runs the kitchen.
The Phuket branch has the strongest Peranakan focus of any in the group, developed over more than a decade with a local Peranakan association and Rajabhat Phuket University. The Peranakan tumee king mackerel, a fenugreek curry with turmeric sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves, and the giam goi, an old Phuket street-style steamed crab dumpling with caramelised tamarind, are the right dishes to help you get lost in the heritage feel of the place. The cooking school, set in the old central courtyard, is well worth a morning of your time.
Address: 96 Krabi, Talat Nuea, Amphoe Mueang Phuket, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Website: blueelephant.com
La Gaetana
Proof that Phuket Old Town isn’t only about Thai food. La Gaetana is a tiny, family-run Italian on Phuket Road, just south of the Old Town centre, run by Gianni Ferrara and his Thai wife Chonticha. Gianni does the cooking, Chonticha runs the room, and between them they work every table, every night. The space has just six tables, sunflower yellow walls, old family photos and a blackboard of specials that changes nightly.
Gianni imports his ingredients from Italy and makes everything in-house: the pasta, the sourdough bread, the gelato, the limoncello. His fettuccine with crab meat in tomato sauce is a family recipe from Campania, and the cooking is rooted in that southern Italian tradition, though the blackboard specials roam further. The bottarga linguine, when it appears, is superb. If you can’t decide, ask Gianni; he’ll recommend a dish and pair a wine to it. He always gets it right. There’s a reason La Gaetana has survived a quarter of a century on an island where most Western restaurants last for so much less.
Address: 352 Phuket Rd, Talat Yai, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Read: The best Italian restaurants in Phuket
Heh
On Yaowarat Road, Heh is chef Oat Nattaphon Othanawathakij’s aim to bring Melbourne to the Andaman. After nearly a decade cooking in Australia, he opened here in 2019.
The cooking is contemporary Australian in spirit, built around whatever the Andaman’s fishermen bring in that day. Fish is dry-aged and processed in-house, and the short, frequently changing menu treats the catch with real intelligence. The charred broccoli with anchovy-miso sauce and crispy fish scales has become a signature, and the charcoal-grilled wagyu short ribs nod to his Melbourne years.
The room is minimal and unfussy, built around a century-old mangosteen tree that grows up through the middle of it. We’d love to say chef Oat forages from inside the dining room, which would be a unique concept, but sadly there was no mangosteen on the menu the last time we stopped by.
Heh has been in the Michelin Guide since 2024, and was named in Tatler Asia’s Best Restaurants in Thailand last year.
Address: 158 Yaowarad Rd, Tambon Talat Yai, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Website: hehphuket.com
Marni
The Old Town’s best pizza by a country mile is served from a converted shophouse on Montri Road near the Clock Circle. Marni is the sister restaurant to Five Olives in Cherngtalay; the same team, the same contemporary Neapolitan dough, but a smaller, more focused room. Five indoor tables, a few more on the terrace, and a menu that sticks to pizza, a few pastas and wine.
The Neapolitan-style pizzas have a contemporary approach, with a cornicione so inflated it borders on theatrical and a centre that stays thin and pliable, all baked in a wood-fired oven. The truffle burrata prosciutto is the one most tables seem to order, and if you’re in a decadent mood, it hits the spot. Honestly, the margherita is better; perfect, in fact.
The wine list is more serious than you’d expect, with a decent natural showing. Marni has ranked in the 50 Top Pizza Asia-Pacific list for four consecutive years, placing 39th in 2026.
Address: 95, 18 Montri Rd, Talad yai, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Instagram: @marniphuket
Five Loaves Burgers
Sometimes, you just want a burger. There’s no shame in that, even in one of Thailand’s most fabulous food centres. At the Old Town’s eastern peripheries, Five Loaves has accrued a decade of experience, perfecting the humble hamburger and expanding to three more as a result. The original has a retro, rustic interior and it serves as a welcome pit stop when the cumulative heat of a day’s eating calls for a cold room and a plate of something familiar and filling.
The burgers use Australian beef, the buns are baked in-house with a slightly sweet, chewy texture, and you can build your own from beef, pork or chicken with a generous choice of toppings and sauces. The Infinity Burger, a double-patty stack of cheddar, bacon and a fried chicken nugget, is the crowd-pleaser. It’s the best burger in the Old Town, and our deviation from Thai food is now done. It all got a bit weird back there.
Address: 169 1 Phangnga Rd, Tambon Talat Yai, เมือง Phuket 83000, Thailand
Instagram: @fiveloavesburgersphuket
Su Chat ‘Since 1987’ Ice Cream
We hope you saved room for dessert and, more specifically, for Phuket’s first fried ice cream, and still the best. Su Chat has been operating in the Samkong neighbourhood since 1987, almost four decades of scooping coconut and egg ice cream, battering it and frying it to order. You choose your scoops and your toppings (sticky rice, red beans, sliced banana, Milo powder) and they assemble the lot. It’s not fancy, and the shopfront gives nothing away, but the fact that it’s lasted this long in a city with no shortage of competition tells you everything. A fitting final stop.
Address: 371 26 Yaowarad Rd, Talat Yai, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
Neung Nom Nua
A Phuket original that’s since expanded to Bangkok, where it now draws hour-long queues on Banthat Thong Road. The concept is simple: shokupan, the pillowy Japanese milk bread, toasted with fresh butter until crisp on the outside and cloud-soft within, then diced, skewered and served with a choice of dipping sauces. There are 19 to pick from; the pandan with coconut milk custard, salted egg yolk custard and Hokkaido milk cream are the top three for a reason. Order a medium set, choose three dips and pair it with one of their flavoured milks (Thai tea, butterscotch and pink milk are all good).
Address: 94 Patiphat Rd, Tambon Talat Nuea, เมือง, Phuket 83000, Thailand
O-Aew Pae Dibuk Road
O-aew is as close to a signature dessert as Phuket gets. Brought by the Hokkien Chinese settlers and found almost nowhere else in Thailand, it’s a soft, clear jelly made from the seeds of a fig tree, mixed with a little banana, sliced into rectangles and served over shaved ice with sweet syrup, red beans and black jelly.
The o-aew shop at 78 Dibuk Road has no English signboard but it’s all on display out front so ordering is easy. These guys make each bowl to order from real o-aew seeds rather than gelatin powder, and the result is cool, slippery, gently sweet and supremely refreshing in the afternoon heat. It costs next to nothing. There’s a reason every local knows this place.
Address: 78 Dibuk Rd, Talat Nuea, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000, Thailand
