Seafood in Phuket

As a visitor to Phuket one of the things you may well notice is the great abundance of fresh seafood of all kinds.  This is not very surprising given the location of the island on the Andaman sea, and the many small islands and bays around it which make perfect locations not just for sea creatures to grow, but for fisherman to catch them.

The menu in most local restaurants therefore weighs more heavily towards the seafood than you will find in Thai restaurants in general.  But the choices of cooking are the familiar tasty Thai mix of soothing flavors and hot spicy sauces, all prepared with the freshness of quick cooking.

Many restaurants will offer fresh seafood, and when they say "fresh" they mean "still swimming"!  There will be large aquariums holding a variety of living seafood from a range of fish through to prawns and shellfish.  Then when you order what you want for dinner it will be netted and prepared right then. 

You can't get fresher than that, but be prepared for the fact that this is naturally an expensive way to buy your seafood.  In the restaurants in Phuket seafood prices quoted on the menu are generally by weight -- so "60B" would not mean that the dish costs sixty Baht, but that the price will be sixty Baht per weight of the seafood.  This should be mentioned somewhere on the menu but you can presume it will be per 100grams -- this is rather the same as Italian menus charge for some foods.

The other thing you need to be aware of is that like Chinese cuisine in Thai cooking fish may be served, and presented on the table, whole -- from head to tail.  If you would rather that you're fish doesn't come to the table looking too much like a fish then make sure you select a filleted dish.