Best Restaurant of 2008 contender
Telephone: 076 355042
Open: 6pm-midnight nightly
Address: 1/5 New Dibuk Road, Phuket City. 83000.
Style: Japanese, although if you want to mix your orders, you can also buy in Thai from the neighboring Lemongrass restaurant.
Price range: Japanese never seems to come cheap. Just as well a lot of the fish is raw; imagine what the price would be if it actually had to be cooked. Sushi regular is 180 baht, teppanyaki (US beef) 400 baht, katsu curry don (130 baht), ice green tea (30 baht) Singha beer (60 baht) Asahi (69 baht.)
Specialty: Shintaro salad and tuna rolls come recommended by the executive chef. He says the fish is bought from the trawlers at the port of Phuket each day, not through a local market.
What Phuketwan says: It's possible to despatch a vast range of goodies at Shintaro faster than Uma Thurman knocks off sword-waving ninjas, as long as the bill doesn't kill you in the end.
Shintaro was actually the name of the star swordsman in 'The Samurai,' a popular black and white tv series from the 1960s.Clearly, it led to more bloody blockbusters.
The restaurant on Phuket doesn't go back quite that far, but it does have a strong local fan base, built over more than 10 years.
The reason probably has a lot to do with the setting. As surely as a single grain of rice stands out on a beach of a zillion grains of sand, Shintaro suits many moods.
Choose from outdoor table seating under the moonlight, close to the sushi bar, indoors in an air-conditioned section that is sometimes as chilly as Mount Fuji under snow, or low Japanese-style behind paper sliding doors in private rooms.
There's a bright red slash along one internal wall that catches the eye. Whitney Houston seems to be warbling much of the time.
Another strange affection comes in the menu, which lists all 142 items in Thai, Japanese and English. But with the English, all the ''i''s have neen replaced with ''j''s.
So it's sushj, not sushi, and thaj beef steak, and jce cream. It makes the menu harder to read, although the bite of the wasabj gets the sinuses singing just as fast as the old wasabi ever did.
And to Sushi Su, who used to enjoy the Shintaro so much she changed her nickname: did you really marry your Canadian boyfriend at 19 and get that degree in dentistry you wanted in Montreal so badly? We bet you miss Shintaro.
How to find it: New Dibuk Road is the extension of Dibuk Road that runs behind the new TAT offices. Shintaro is close to the intersection with Thepkrasattri Road.
Parking: Plenty in the street.
Phuketwan restaurant reviewers pay for their meals. If someone else does, we tell you so
Telephone: 076 355042
Open: 6pm-midnight nightly
Address: 1/5 New Dibuk Road, Phuket City. 83000.
Style: Japanese, although if you want to mix your orders, you can also buy in Thai from the neighboring Lemongrass restaurant.
Price range: Japanese never seems to come cheap. Just as well a lot of the fish is raw; imagine what the price would be if it actually had to be cooked. Sushi regular is 180 baht, teppanyaki (US beef) 400 baht, katsu curry don (130 baht), ice green tea (30 baht) Singha beer (60 baht) Asahi (69 baht.)
Specialty: Shintaro salad and tuna rolls come recommended by the executive chef. He says the fish is bought from the trawlers at the port of Phuket each day, not through a local market.
What Phuketwan says: It's possible to despatch a vast range of goodies at Shintaro faster than Uma Thurman knocks off sword-waving ninjas, as long as the bill doesn't kill you in the end.
Shintaro was actually the name of the star swordsman in 'The Samurai,' a popular black and white tv series from the 1960s.Clearly, it led to more bloody blockbusters.
The restaurant on Phuket doesn't go back quite that far, but it does have a strong local fan base, built over more than 10 years.
The reason probably has a lot to do with the setting. As surely as a single grain of rice stands out on a beach of a zillion grains of sand, Shintaro suits many moods.
Choose from outdoor table seating under the moonlight, close to the sushi bar, indoors in an air-conditioned section that is sometimes as chilly as Mount Fuji under snow, or low Japanese-style behind paper sliding doors in private rooms.
There's a bright red slash along one internal wall that catches the eye. Whitney Houston seems to be warbling much of the time.
Another strange affection comes in the menu, which lists all 142 items in Thai, Japanese and English. But with the English, all the ''i''s have neen replaced with ''j''s.
So it's sushj, not sushi, and thaj beef steak, and jce cream. It makes the menu harder to read, although the bite of the wasabj gets the sinuses singing just as fast as the old wasabi ever did.
And to Sushi Su, who used to enjoy the Shintaro so much she changed her nickname: did you really marry your Canadian boyfriend at 19 and get that degree in dentistry you wanted in Montreal so badly? We bet you miss Shintaro.
How to find it: New Dibuk Road is the extension of Dibuk Road that runs behind the new TAT offices. Shintaro is close to the intersection with Thepkrasattri Road.
Parking: Plenty in the street.
Phuketwan restaurant reviewers pay for their meals. If someone else does, we tell you so
