Southern Thailand Food & Traditional Cuisine

Southern Thai food is widely held to be the spiciest in the country, and Thais from elsewhere say so with respect rather than complaint. Fresh chillies are used in quantity and combined with black pepper, and there is no attempt to soften the result with sugar.

Turmeric is the regional signature, giving many dishes a deep yellow colour, alongside generous use of coconut, which grows everywhere on the peninsula.

Seafood is the protein, naturally, and it is genuinely fresh — much of it landed the same morning.

Two outside traditions run through the cooking. Malay and Muslim influence brings dried-spice curries, satay, roti and biryani, and shapes the food of the deep south. Hokkien Chinese influence in Phuket and the tin towns brings noodle dishes, pork, and the dim-sum breakfast that Phuket eats daily.

A southern meal is built around rice with several sharply flavoured dishes and a plate of raw vegetables and herbs to cool the mouth between mouthfuls — the vegetables are not a garnish but part of the method.

Gaeng tai pla is the region’s fiercest dish and the one southerners miss most: a curry built on fermented fish innards, turmeric and chilli, salty and pungent and extremely hot. It is not a beginner’s dish and it is worth trying anyway.

Gaeng som pak tai, the southern sour curry, is thin, orange with turmeric and chilli, sour with tamarind, usually with fish and shredded green papaya — quite different from the central version.

Khua kling is minced meat dry-fried with a pounded curry paste until almost no liquid remains, intensely hot and fragrant with kaffir lime leaf.

Massaman curry has its roots in the Muslim south — mild, with cardamom, cinnamon, star anise and potato — and is the gentlest thing on a southern table.

Also: khao yam, a breakfast rice salad with toasted coconut, herbs and a fermented fish dressing; roti with curry or condensed milk; Phuket’s mee Hokkien and its dim sum; and moo hong, pork belly braised with pepper and garlic.

Eating in the south begins early. Phuket’s dim sum breakfast is an institution — Hokkien in origin, eaten from about six in the morning in dedicated shops — and elsewhere the day starts with khao yam or roti from a stall.

Night markets are the main evening event in every town. Phuket’s Sunday walking street through the old town, Krabi’s riverside market and Hat Yai’s large night markets are the best known.

Curry shops — khao gaeng — display a dozen or more prepared dishes in trays and serve them over rice by the plate. This is how most southerners eat lunch, and pointing at what looks good is a perfectly acceptable ordering method.

Seafood is bought by weight from the ice and cooked to order at beach restaurants, which is worth doing at least once — agree the price per kilo first.

Halal food is widespread and clearly marked, and in the deep south is the default.

Ask for mai phet if you want it milder, and expect the result still to be hot.

Wine is not a southern tradition, and the peninsula’s heat and humidity rule out viticulture — Thailand’s vineyards are all well to the north of here. What the south has instead is an import culture built around its resorts, and the international wine lists on Phuket and Samui are among the best in the country, though heavy duties make them expensive.

The local drinks are different. Toddy — fermented sap tapped from the sugar palm and drunk fresh, mildly alcoholic and sour — is a genuine southern tradition, sold along the roadside in the palm country of the east coast.

Coconut in every form, from the water to the roasted sugar, is the regional constant.

Coffee is southern too: robusta grows well here and the traditional preparation, oliang, is a strong dark brew sweetened with condensed milk and poured over ice.

Note that alcohol sales are restricted by law to roughly 11am to 2pm and 5pm to midnight and banned on Buddhist holidays, and that in the Muslim-majority far south alcohol is much less available.