6 Best Restaurants in The Gulf Coast Beaches, Thailand

This beachfront diner serves salads and sandwiches, both traditional and inventive. Among the latter, the "Hot Bandana" is a tasty vegetarian sandwich baked inside a bread bowl and served wrapped in a bandana.

Pattaya's reputation as a top spot for sampling seafood is given fresh impetus at this lively restaurant. The venue is open daily for lunch, but it comes alive on weekend nights when gourmands flock to its seafood buffet, which is a kingly affair starring superfresh morsels served in an underwater-inspired space popping with eclectic artworks. 

Hidden in plain sight on the way to an elephant camp and waterfall is this family-run Thai restaurant that brings a love of food, art (one of the owners is a multimedia artist and the decor reflects this), and music together under one canopy. Keep it classic with curries, stir-fries, or stuffed omelets—all fairly priced and full of flavor.

Beachfront trattorias don't come more inviting than this one. Pizza is the specialty of the house, and pies come in various thin-crusted, wood-fired guises. Perhaps the best thing about the place, though, is its ambience. You can literally feel the sand between your toes at the beachside setting while the views of the boats sailing in and out of Mae Haad Bay are unfailingly evocative. 

The alluring scent of fresh baked goods immediately delights all who enter this funky place. The owner, who picked up his baking skills while living and working in Germany, opened Nira's in the mid-1980s, before the island even had electricity.

Organic vegetables take center stage at this collaboration between a couple of acclaimed chefs from Paris and Berlin. Begin your day with a freshly packed jar of chia pudding, a superfood bowl, or a chili-spiked Thai Greens smoothie, and come back later for an encyclopedic array of clean eats.