The best local Thai restaurants in Phuket Town include some of the best restaurants on the entire island. The provincial capital is a gastronomic delight, with top-notch restaurants covering a variety of cuisines. Thai restaurants are particularly common, with little shophouse restaurants on practically every street. If you’re looking for the very best local cuisine in Phuket, you’ll almost certainly find it here, usually at exceptionally low prices.

In Phuket Town, the greater challenge is not in finding a genuinely local restaurant – allowing you to get a real taste of Thailand – but in finding the best of them. We’ve picked out the top choices, which combine delicious homemade food with great low prices.

  • 1

    One Chun Café & Restaurant

    One Chun Café & Restaurant
    • Food

    One Chun Café & Restaurant on Thepkasattri Road is one of the best Thai restaurants in Phuket. That's a boast made all the more remarkable when you consider how affordable the prices are. The 13-page menu of this relaxed, vintage-style restaurant contains only genuine Sino-Thai and southern Thai dishes, most of which are seafood-based.

    Among the most popular choices at One Chun is the crabmeat curry in coconut milk. The restaurant is very busy most days, with the majority of the customers being local Thais.

    Location: 48/1 Thepkasattri Road, Talat Yai, Muang, Phuket 83000, Thailand

    Open: Daily from 10am to 10pm

    Phone: +66 (0)76 355 909

    Map
  • 2

    Kopitiam by Wilai

    Kopitiam by Wilai
    • Food

    Kopitiam by Wilai offers an excellent taste of Phuket Old Town, combining a traditional vintage style with great homemade Thai food. It's a very small venue, with only 25 seats and Chinese-style décor. The day’s specials are written on a blackboard only in Thai, but the menu is in both Thai and English.

    Top choices include pad prick Thai dam (black pepper chicken with mushrooms) and pad krapow gai (fried chicken with basil leaves), among other common southern Thai dishes.

    Location: 18 Thalang Road, Muang, Phuket 83000, Thailand

    Open: Monday–Saturday from 11am to 5pm and from 6.30pm to 9pm (closed on Sundays)

    Phone: +66 (0)83 606 9776

    Map
    • Food

    Raya Restaurant occupies a renovated Sino-Portuguese mansion on  Dibuk Road. The sister-venue of One Chun Café & Restaurant, it takes diners back to the turn of the 20th century with very high quality local Thai dishes.

    Signature dishes include caramelised and braised pork belly, spicy Phuket prawns and the crabmeat curry, all of which are bursting with flavour. Even though Raya Restaurant is the choice of important dignitaries and celebrities, the prices are affordable enough for it to be regularly filled by local Thais. 

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    Location: 48/1 Dibuk Rd, Talat Yai, Muang, Phuket 83000, Thailand

    Open: Daily from 10am to 10pm

    Phone: +66 (0)76 218 155

    Map
  • 4

    Natural Restaurant

    Natural Restaurant
    • Food

    Natural Restaurant (or Tamachart Restaurant) is a rustic  2-storey venue that certainly lives up to its name. It has a thatch roof and lots of plants and trees in and around the dining rooms. The random bric-a-brac, including old valve radios, fish tanks made out of old TVs and computer monitors and the fully-functional electric train set just adds to the charm.

    Natural Restaurant has a huge menu of over 200 affordable Thai dishes, including a particularly fine fresh oyster platter and steamed seabass in lemon sauce.

    Location: 62/5 Phuthon, Bangkok Rd, Talat Nuea, Phuket 83000, Thailand

    Open: Daily from 10.30am to 11pm

    Phone: +66 (0)76 214 037

    Map
  • 5

    VT Namnueng Phuket Restaurant

    VT Namnueng Phuket Restaurant
    • Food

    When you think of a restaurant belonging to a popular national brand, your first thought is perhaps not a 19th-century mansion with classic French décor. However, VT Namneung is an extremely popular brand and their Phuket restaurant on Wichitsongkram Road is astonishingly grand. 

    Despite this very smart appearance, the food is such good value for money that the 200-seat venue is regularly filled, mostly with local Thais. Favourites from the menu include prawns with tamarind sauce, chicken with cashew nuts and a full spectrum of green, red and yellow curries, with dishes priced between 100 and 200 baht each.

    Location: 75 Wichitsongkram Road, Talat Nuea, Muang, Phuket 83000, Thailand

    Open: Daily from 11am to 9pm

    Phone: +66 (0)76 354 500

    Map
    • Food

    A great way to get a typical taste of Phuket is by going to Mee Ton Poe, a noodle institution located by the Surin traffic circle in Phuket Town. The shop is famous for its signature dish – stir-fried Hokkien mee or Hokkien noodles, consumed by local folks since 1946.

    The thick yellow fried noodles with seafood, pork and vegetables toppings are best served with a half-cooked egg on top and accompanied by iced tea or sweet coconut drink. The restaurant can be very busy at midday – you may have to share a table with strangers.

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    Location: 214, 7-8 Phuket Rd, Talat Yai, Muang, Phuket 83000, Thailand

    Open: Tuesday–Wednesday from 10am to 8pm, Thursday–Monday from 10am to 6.30pm

    Phone: +66 (0)76 216 293

    Map
  • 7

    Cha Kang Rao

    Cha Kang Rao
    • Food

    Deceptively modest from the outside, Cha Kang Rao is actually quite smart on the inside, being well-lit with good wooden furniture and the walls all used as blackboards, showing off impressive drawings and names of dishes in Thai. 

    There's also an English menu, which highlights the restaurant's speciality – Thai noodle soup. Ordering works in a step-by-step DIY method, allowing you to choose your own combination of noodles and flavours. Cha Kang Rao offers free Wi-Fi as well. 

    Location: Talat Nuea, Muang, Phuket 83000, Thailand

    Open: Saturday–Thursday from 11am to 8.30pm (closed on Fridays)

    Phone: +66 (0)86 909 1829

    Map
  • 8

    Pae Teaw Noodle

    Pae Teaw Noodle
    • Food

    Pae Teaw Noodle is essentially a simple shophouse restaurant, albeit larger and more open than most. It occupies a rather weather-beaten building at the edge of Old Phuket Town, but the interior is simple and clean.

    The main dishes are noodle-based, including egg noodles in tom yam and egg noodles with wonton. In fact, almost the entire menu is just combinations of these and a couple of extra ingredients. It may be simple, but it's cheap and very popular, particularly with kids from the local schools.

    Location: Hongyokutis Road, Talat Yai, Muang, Phuket 83000, Thailand

    Open: Daily from 10am to 7pm

    Map
Ben Reeves | Compulsive Traveller