PRU Phuket Michelin One Star Restaurant Review
PRU Phuket Michelin One Star Restaurant Review
PRU restaurant in Trisara Resort is the first Michelin One Star Restaurant in Phuket and Phang Nga. They are listed under the Michelin Guide 2019 as the guide book entered the second year and expanded to Phuket and Phang Nga beyond Phuket.
We reviewed 15 restaurants and street food listed in Michelin Guide 2019 Bangkok Phuket and Phang Nga under a week. We went to five restaurants out of six in Phang Nga and went to another 10 restaurants in Phuket. PRU restaurant is the only Michelin One Star restaurant in this region. You can check out the full list of restaurants in our special dedicated page at https://www.placesandfoods.com/themichelinguidethailand
We drove to PRU Restaurant as we rented a car for our quest to review 15 restaurants in Phang Nga and Phuket. Malaysians and Singaporeans can use their driving license to rent a car in Thailand and driving in Phang Nga and Phuket is relatively easy. We booked our car with Thai Rent A Car and this is our third time using this car company, they are one of the largest car rental companies in Thailand with over 32 branches and 8000 cars in their fleet.
PRU means Plant Raise Understand. They are in a mission to elevate farm to table cuisine, in Phuket and as part of a larger global movement to grow, make and enjoy food naturally, slowly, and always in the company of family and friends.
You have to book your table at PRU restaurant and it is located at north east of the island and close to the Phuket International Airport. If you are staying in Patong Beach or Phuket Town, expect your journey to the restaurant to be an hour.
It offers a good view of the private beach and sea and amazing sunset view on a good weather. The restaurant is fully air conditioned and there are limited tables in the restaurant.
There are three course meals available and they are six course, eight course and vegetarian course We ordered the six course and add on the Wagyu Beef for additional THB 850++. Most of the ingredients are local produced or sourced from Thailand and thus they do grow some of the vegetables used for their food.
This is a fine dining restaurant and they will present the food and then they will explain the origin of the ingredients before they will serve the food.
There are three pre-meal snacks and they are Mackerel, Sturgeon and Duck Ham. There are no exact names for the dishes so we named it for the main ingredients used.
Salted Mackerel with peas and passion fruits and the texture is crispy, crunchy, taste of little saltiness and sour after taste.
Leek with cured duck ham and the texture is soft and hints of saltiness.
Sturgeon wrapped with pickle with seaweed biscuit and topped with caviar. The texture of the biscuit is crunchy with hints of salty after taste from caviar.
Sourdough bread with Thai butter with mountain salt and smoked butter with dried lemongrass. The outer layer of sourdough bread is hard while the inside is soft. We enjoyed the butter with mountain salt while the smoked butter is stronger in flavour with smoky taste.
Palette Cleanser is Tomato sorbet with organic tomato, coriander crumble, pistachio with green tomato sauce and the taste is refreshing.
Black Crab and Phuket Coffee (found in the mangroves in Phang Nga). This is the first dish according to their menu.
To be honest it is one weird looking dish as it looks like a plate of ‘sand’. Underneath the ‘sand’ is the pickled young coconut heart.
The dish comes with the brown sauce that is cooked using the black crab shell and coffee. The brown sauce is poured onto the dish.
Then, you need squeeze a bit of the juice from the finger lime or better known as lime caviar to add more flavour.
You get texture from the pickled young coconut heart, strong taste of the black crab, hints of the coffee and the acidic taste of the lime caviar. This is similar to crab bisque and we enjoyed this.
The salted egg is sourced from Chai Ya and it sits on top of the mashed egg plant and sorrel cream. The broth is made from smoked abalone from Phuket.
The texture of this salted egg is unique unlike the other salted egg you tasted outside of this restaurant. The salted egg is creamy and you get the sticky texture aftertaste. The taste is subtle even with the broth and you get the crunchy bits texture. This is new for us and we are sitting on the fence in terms of the taste of this dish.
The carrots are wrapped in a banana leaf, slow cooked for six hours underground with wooden fire. It sits on top of the mixture of Hollandaise sauce and fermented carrot sauce.
The texture of the carrot is soft and it is sweet while the sauce is strong in flavour and creamy texture. Make sure you get the portion of the carrot and the sauce right so it can complement each other as the taste of the sauce can be overwhelming.
The river prawn is deshelled, marinated with salt water and grilled with the wooden fire. The XO sauce is combination of water lily root, sautéed prawn brain, baby broccoli and Thai sour grape fruit. The dish also comes with sliced zucchini with bell pepper cream.
The prawn is grilled to perfection and it brings out the natural flavour of the prawn. The prawn goes well with the smoky thick XO sauce that offer hints of spicy after taste. Don’t forget the sliced zucchini and also the spicy bell pepper cream that offers more texture and flavour to the prawn. We enjoyed this very much, the natural flavours of the prawn, the texture and also the smoky thick XO sauce that adds more flavour to the prawn.
The duck is sourced from the mountains of Petchabun which is located north of Bangkok. The sliced of duck is marinated with salt water and honey and dried for 5 days.
The pretty stuffs on the side include root vegetable, beetroot, yam bean and Thai cherry. It comes with black garlic cream with mushroom slice.
The aged duck comes with crispy skin and texture of the meat is tender. We love the natural flavour of the duck with hints of saltiness. The cream sauce is salty while the cherries and the vegetables offer sweet taste to the duck.
I ordered the additional wagyu beef for additional THB 850++ that comes with two pieces of beef. The wagyu beef is from sourced from Nakhon Phanom and the cow is a cross breed of local and Australia cow.
It comes with eggplant and smoked turnip and the sauce is cooked combination of eggplant, vacuum burnt turnip sauce, and bone marrow.
The wagyu beef is excellent. It is hard to imagine you get such good quality of wagyu beef from Thailand. We enjoyed the natural taste of the beef with hints of saltiness and we wished they offered more for THB 850. Since it comes with two pieces, enjoyed the wagyu beef slowly with your eyes closed and let the taste do its magic.
The restaurant knew that we are bloggers so they offered us complimentary Thai Cheese Platter tasting. They offer different types of cheese made in Thailand from the north region of Chiang Rai by European farmers.
They offer 12 types of cheese and you have to choose six types. We had Ash Goat, Robuchon, Le Doi Pao, Mae Lao and Thai Blue Cheese. We are not cheese experts (even though we did quite a number of cheese tasting in Australia) and we loved the taste of the Thai cheese. To be honest, we are quite surprised by the taste and the quality of the local cheese too.
The dessert is sourdough bread soaked with milk ice cream with beet root meringue, mulberry juice, crumbled Thai mountain almond. This is our first time having sourdough bread ice cream and the taste is not that sweet and it is tasty. You get the sweetness taste of the mulberry juice and also the crispy texture from the crumbled almond.
We received another surprise from the restaurant with the dessert box. It is mango with calamansi curd, Lemon Tart with mousse lemon and local jackfruit, Madeleines with Thai almond, Coffee Cake with caramelised banana and Chocolate Truffle with Thai cocoa and rambai jam.
The assistant main chef spoke to us after the meal as the main chef, Chef Jimmy Ophorst was not around. We briefly talk about the food, the taste and the presentation.
Overall, I was impressed by most of the food except the salted egg yolk. The service is good, the ambiance is comfortable and the timing of the food servicing is fast. The dinner took over 2 hours from start till the end and you won’t feel that long. Like most Michelin Starred restaurants, I like how they explain the ingredients and cooking method of each dish.
The local wagyu beef was impressive and the cheese platter was a big surprise as I never knew that northern Thailand produce so many types of cheese. The aged duck was enjoyable and same goes with the river prawn dish. I love the concept from the farm to the table and it is perfectly executed at PRU restaurant.
How much we paid for our dinner? The bill came to THB 6744.21 inclusive of tax and VAT and it is around RM 905 for one person. The Acqua Panna still water is priced at THB 380++, 6 Course Tasting Set at THB 4,500++ and Thai Wagyu Beef at THB 450++.
It was an expensive dinner and you probably will spend for dinner like this once in a blue moon.
This is the most expensive dinner I had so far for one person and second most expensive food expensive as the Tasmania’s Seafood Seduction Cruise experience is priced at AUD$ 685 which is around THB 14,730 inclusive of the day cruise from Hobart.
I was told that since the PRU restaurant awarded Michelin One Star, their customers grew more than half. This is the power of The Michelin Guide and it encourages more people to dine in places like PRU restaurant and other restaurants and street food that we will blog soon.
PRU Restaurant is far from the Phuket town and popular beach areas like Patong, Karon, Kata and Panwa so do make the proper travel arrangement if you plan to visit the restaurant. You can self drive or book a taxi or Grab to the restaurant or back. The dress code for PRU Restaurant is smart casual and no shorts and flippers are allowed in the restaurant.
Check out our new The Michelin Guide Restaurants in Thailand page at https://www.placesandfoods.com/themichelinguidethailand
