Peang Prai Restaurant

New Years resolution number 1 - try some different restaurants for the blog, and also so we get some new experiences. Sure we have our favourites and anyway we can't afford to eat out that much, we tend to eat at home during the week, or maybe get some cheap Thai food at small places near our house (the kind of places where all dishes are 35 - 50 Baht). In fact, the next restaurant on this blog will be the cheap local place we eat at most often.. but I do want to try some new restaurants this year, and the first was Peang Prai.



Peang Prai (pronounced PeeYang Pry) is a restaurant I have meant to try for a couple of years. It's been recommended by friends, it's in a part of Phuket that we head to quite often, it always looked "interesting" ... so we finally tried it a couple of weeks ago. When I am thinking about eating, there are several considerations - 1. Location - I like a nice view, a quiet area, an interesting location - Peang Prai is at the entrance to the Bang Pae Waterfall park, well off any main road, views of trees, flowers and a lake. So it's a good place to combine with a visit to the waterfall and the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project.



(above) the view one way, and (below) the other way ...



It's not a huge restaurant, could maybe hold about 30 people, with seating on the 2nd floor of an octagonal building in the trees. A couple of tables were already occupied by Thai families - which I would normally take as a hint that the food is good here - the locals know where to go! We ordered a selection of things - our kids are normally happy with a fried rice or garlic chicken, whereas my wife and I like to eat spicy salads and local specialties - the menu was pretty big - all the normal Thai dishes but lots of Phuket/Southern Thai food which always pleases my wife.



I was a little miffed that the service seemed a bit slow - the place was not really busy and there were 4 ladies cooking in the kitchen. Sometimes you have to slow down a bit. This is a family run restaurant and this kind of laid back place can be a little too laid back for some people. You can't expect snappy service at a place like this. Fortunately, they had very cold beers, served with an iced glass too. A couple of these went down very smoothly.

Food was good too - we ordered a bunch of things, and the menu has many other dishes to try, so I am sure we'll eat here again. I had a salad called Yam Tua Pu - made with wingbeans, prawns, cashew nuts. We also got some Hor Mok, local style fish curry cooked in a banana leaf, and a similar dish made with mushrooms...





They do good coffee here too - my wife said her ice coffee was great. We had actually thought about just having a drink here and then eating somewhere else, but once we saw the menu we had to give it a proper try. I mentioned that location is important to me when trying a restaurant - so is price! Peang Prai is not cheap like a little street restaurant but most dishes were decently priced at 60 - 100 Baht, and the beer only 45 Baht. The 3rd consideration is "how good is the food?" - you don't know until you try! In this case - good enough that we will eat there again, helped by the friendly service, yeh a bit slow, but slow with a smile :)

And then we got free dessert too - fried banana done in their own way, small pieces of banana fried in batter with sesame seeds and a sprinkle of sugar ...



I think our total bill was about 500 Baht. I have some more photos of Peang Prai on my Flickr site: Peang Prai Restaurant. We like this part of Phuket. Within a few miles are a couple of other restaurants - Bang Pae Seafood and Chumchon Floating Restaurant from where you can go Kayaking in the Mangroves. This is the Phuket that we go looking for.

Peang Prai Restaurant - Location Map


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