Best Restaurant of 2008 contender
Telephone: 076 249732
Open: 11am-9.30pm
Address: Third floor, Central Festival shopping mall
Style: Thai fusion restaurant, coffee shop and bakery
Price range: Thai dishes (75 baht-85 baht) are mostly affordable but others are a little more expensive, especially when you add on the seven percent VAT and the 10 percent service charge. A vanilla milkshake, for example, costs a towering 135 baht, which is almost as much as a salmon steak and shrimp roe salad (145 baht). Blue Cup brand coffee and tea are also on sale, along with a bakery range and S&P products that seem to focus on branded snacks, cookies, sausages, mixed meats and frozen products.
Specialty: Fried chicken with cashew nuts, prawn and fried rice with chilli sauce, deep fried grouper with hot and sour sauce (425 baht)
What the manager/chef says: A member card will earn a 20 percent discount after 6pm. At the bakery, buy two, get one free.
What Phuketwan says: S&P can be a refuge from the Central Festival shopping mall, although the ambient noise is always difficult to escape. Plenty of Thais eat and shop here, which is a good sign. S&P is a good place to bring the kids, too, because the menus have a picture book feel and they can usually find something appealing. Varieties of pork knuckle seems to be something they do a lot, but there are also creamy smoothies (85 baht) and garlick and pepper river prawns (150 baht) too. The coffee and tea takes out a 16-page menu all their own, and there's some justifiable pride taken in being the Thailand Barista Champions of 2007. Perfection may not be quite attainable yet. One lettuce leaf at the bottom of the salad should never have left the kitchen, and the cold drink was served without a coaster, which meant that before long, it was dripping water everywhere. But these are small blemishes. As far as shopping mall outlets go, which is never quite as far as they should, it's a place worth considering for coffee or a meal, especially with kids.
How to find it: Third floor, Central Festival. About the middle.
Parking: Two underground layers that fill up remarkably quickly on busy shopping days.
Phuketwan restaurant reviewers pay for their meals. If someone else does, we tell you so
Telephone: 076 249732
Open: 11am-9.30pm
Address: Third floor, Central Festival shopping mall
Style: Thai fusion restaurant, coffee shop and bakery
Price range: Thai dishes (75 baht-85 baht) are mostly affordable but others are a little more expensive, especially when you add on the seven percent VAT and the 10 percent service charge. A vanilla milkshake, for example, costs a towering 135 baht, which is almost as much as a salmon steak and shrimp roe salad (145 baht). Blue Cup brand coffee and tea are also on sale, along with a bakery range and S&P products that seem to focus on branded snacks, cookies, sausages, mixed meats and frozen products.
Specialty: Fried chicken with cashew nuts, prawn and fried rice with chilli sauce, deep fried grouper with hot and sour sauce (425 baht)
What the manager/chef says: A member card will earn a 20 percent discount after 6pm. At the bakery, buy two, get one free.
What Phuketwan says: S&P can be a refuge from the Central Festival shopping mall, although the ambient noise is always difficult to escape. Plenty of Thais eat and shop here, which is a good sign. S&P is a good place to bring the kids, too, because the menus have a picture book feel and they can usually find something appealing. Varieties of pork knuckle seems to be something they do a lot, but there are also creamy smoothies (85 baht) and garlick and pepper river prawns (150 baht) too. The coffee and tea takes out a 16-page menu all their own, and there's some justifiable pride taken in being the Thailand Barista Champions of 2007. Perfection may not be quite attainable yet. One lettuce leaf at the bottom of the salad should never have left the kitchen, and the cold drink was served without a coaster, which meant that before long, it was dripping water everywhere. But these are small blemishes. As far as shopping mall outlets go, which is never quite as far as they should, it's a place worth considering for coffee or a meal, especially with kids.
How to find it: Third floor, Central Festival. About the middle.
Parking: Two underground layers that fill up remarkably quickly on busy shopping days.
Phuketwan restaurant reviewers pay for their meals. If someone else does, we tell you so
