18 Best Restaurants in The Gulf Coast Beaches, Thailand

Mere feet from lapping waves, this perennial favorite serves the freshest seafood at reasonable prices. The purple baby-octopus soup and the sour curry with local turmeric and fish are two great options.

A longtime local favorite for Thai-style seafood, Koti has a no-nonsense decor and a packed dining room that attests to the flavor of dishes like hor mok talay (steamed seafood curry). The large menu includes such crowd-pleasers as fried fish with garlic and pepper.

This surf-and-turf restaurant takes pride in using the best of the region's produce and seafood. Try the beer-battered fish-and-chips served in traditional newspaper wrapping, or start your day with the best eggs Benedict in town.

Welcome to the best-value French restaurant in Thailand. At Didine the emphasis is not on fancy plating or any of the familiar gallic niceties but rather on delivering great-tasting dishes at extraordinary prices. Highlights include classic salads like Nicoise and more substantial offerings such as pork cordon bleu and beef red wine Parmentier.

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. 

Rated by many Thais as being among the best seafood restaurants in the entire province, this humble venue has serious credentials. The kitchen backs up its rep courtesy of perfectly cooked Thai-style seafood. Menu highlights include the stir-fried prawns in salt, chili, and garlic.

This two-story seafood restaurant has been feeding Mae Nam residents for decades. The menu changes daily depending on the day's catch. Its most famous dish, stir-fried crab with black pepper, is highly recommended.

Everything on the menu at this well-run Lamai restaurant is excellent. The venue doesn't reinvent the wheel. Instead, the onus is on classic Thai dishes cooked well and with love. Extra marks go to the ambience, which sees parties dine in individual wooden salas (pavilions) in a verdant tropical garden. 

For elegant French cooking, try this small waterfront bistro whose owner moved here from Nice. The three-course tasting menu might include such delicacies as a shark with pineapple entrée, along with a salad and dessert.

It's not all about the atmosphere at this lively venue: the kitchen is no slouch in the creativity department. Simplicity is key to your enjoyment, with choice cuts of meat and prime local produce getting top billing. Highlights include rotisserie chicken and wood-fired pizza. The nightly live music and array of beers on tap also help to provide uplift.

The chefs at this Thai-French restaurant acknowledge its Asian influences while relying mainly on French technique. Prawns might come, for instance, Thai-style in a curry with fresh coriander in coconut milk or with echoes of France in a vermouth sauce.

Lovers of Italian food are particularly well-served on the island, with several stellar options. One of the most memorable is where chef-proprietor Alessandro Paterno presides (usually with cigarette fixed to mouth) over a daily-changing selection of fish and seafood creations.

Popular with Thais (always a good sign), Saeng Thai serves everything from grilled prawns with bean noodles to fried grouper with chili and tamarind juice. Now in a new larger location that's a step up from its original ramshackle setting.

The Hua Hin area, including Takiab, is famed for its fresh seafood, and there are literally dozens of great places to sample its marine bounty cooked Thai-style in an array of stir-fries, soups, and spicy salads. Among these venues, Sopa gets consistently good reviews, and the very reasonable prices add to its cache among the discerning local audience. 

Combining fine dining and photography, this restaurant--gallery serves delicate interpretations of southern Thai classics—fish dishes, curries, grilled seafood, and the like. The service is first-rate, the atmosphere relaxed and romantic.

A pair of fine-dining vets from Poland are behind this cutting-edge café, which leans heavily on crowd-pleasing Western food made with quality ingredients. They were at first known for their beef-tongue burgers, which were a tough sell to a casual beach crowd, but a gourmet Wagyu option is now the attention-grabber.

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.