Phuket

To understand a Phuket meal, one has to walk Thalang Road. The mile-long main street of Old Phuket Town is lined with two- and three-storey Sino-Portuguese shophouses, painted in pistachio and ochre and faded teal, with shuttered second-floor windows and arched first-floor walkways shaded against the sun. They were built between roughly 1903 and 1930 by the Hokkien Chinese tin barons whose mines once made Phuket one of the wealthiest small islands in Asia. Most are now restored. Some are cafes. A few are still residences, the great-grandchildren of the original owners playing badminton in the courtyard at the back.

It is estimated that around seventy per cent of Phuket residents carry some Peranakan ancestry, descendants of the Baba Chinese who married local Thai and Malay women in the 19th century. The community gave the island its distinctive Old Phuket cuisine, sometimes called Baba food: Chinese-Hokkien in technique, Thai in spice, Malay in sweetness, and entirely its own in the eating. The signature dish is moo hong, the soy- and pepper-braised pork belly that comes to every wedding, every funeral, every holiday and every Sunday lunch. Beside it, almost always, mee hokkien, fat yellow wheat noodles stir-fried in a smoky wok with prawns, squid, pork and a little dark sweetness. After it, perhaps, the island’s strange and wonderful o-tao, a hot, half-crisp omelette of tapioca, taro and oysters, scraped from a glowing pan and finished with bean sprouts and pickled chilli.

The best of these dishes are still found a step removed from the souvenir streets. At Raya, a 19th-century mansion on Dibuk Road, the Peranakan recipes have been served by the same family for three generations. At Tu Kab Khao, set in another beautifully restored shophouse, the moo hong is unhurried, dark, perfectly balanced, and the pad tai goong sod, fresh prawns in a hot sweet-sour curry, is a quiet wonder. At Kopitiam by Wilai on Thalang Road, breakfast might be a plate of mee hokkien and a thick local kopi, drunk standing at a wooden counter that has been there since long before any of us were born.

On Sunday evenings the same street closes to traffic and becomes Lard Yai, the Old Town walking market. Three hundred and sixty metres of food stalls and craft sellers fill Thalang Road from four in the afternoon until late, framed by the lit-up shophouses and a soundtrack of buskers and bicycle bells. Walk it slowly. Stop for the horseshoe crab salad. Try a-pong, the small charcoal-cooked coconut crepes folded and eaten warm. Cool down with o-eaw, a shaved ice of grass jelly, kidney beans and bright red syrup that is, the locals will tell you firmly, only ever properly made in Phuket. The market began in late 2013 as a community experiment to reanimate the historic street after dark. It has since become one of the most enjoyable two hours of food anywhere in Thailand.