Best Indian Restaurants in Phuket 2026: Expat Favourites

If you've lived in Phuket for any length of time, you'll know that the island's food scene goes well beyond pad thai and green curry. Phuket has a genuinely strong Indian food scene — driven partly by a sizable Indian expat community (particularly in and around the Laguna/Bang Tao area) and partly by decades of Indian tourists who demand the real thing.

After six years here, I've worked my way through most of the options. Here's my honest guide to the best Indian restaurants in Phuket in 2026 — along with what to order, what to avoid, and what it'll cost you.

North Indian in Phuket: The Curry Houses

North Indian cuisine — butter chicken, dal makhani, biryani, naan — is what most expats are craving when the homesickness hits. Phuket does this well, particularly in the Bang Tao and Laguna corridor where the Indian community is densest.

Bang Tao and Laguna Area

The strip of restaurants along Bangtao Beach Road and into the Laguna resort complex has several solid North Indian options. Look for establishments serving a full tandoor menu — the quality of tandoori chicken and lamb chops is a good litmus test. A proper lunch or dinner at a mid-range North Indian restaurant here will run you ฿400–฿700 per person including a beer or lassi.

Several Indian-run restaurants in the Cherng Talay / Surin area also cater heavily to the Indian tourist and expat market — expect authentic spice levels (and the ability to tone them down if needed), proper ghee-rich dals, and freshly baked naan from a real tandoor oven.

Patong: Tourist Belt Options

Patong has Indian restaurants — mostly clustered around Bangla Road and the beach road — but quality varies considerably. The best ones are run by Indian families who've been here for years; the worst are Thai-run restaurants with a "Indian cuisine" sign out front and a very creative interpretation of butter chicken. The rule: look for restaurants where the kitchen staff are Indian and where the menu has genuine depth, not just ten dishes with "masala" in the name.

South Indian Food in Phuket: The Underrated Option

South Indian cuisine — dosa, idli, sambar, rasam, various rice-based dishes — is less flashy than North Indian but arguably more authentic and consistently excellent in Phuket. Phuket Town has the best concentration of South Indian options, partly due to the historical connection between Phuket's Peranakan community and southern Indian traders.

Phuket Town's South Indian Scene

The old town area and nearby streets have several South Indian restaurants that cater primarily to the local Tamil and Telugu communities living in Phuket. These places are excellent value — a full vegetarian thali (rice, sambar, rasam, multiple vegetables, papadum, dessert) for ฿150–฿250. The ambiance is basic but the food is the real deal.

Masala dosa — a crispy fermented crepe filled with spiced potato — is the benchmark dish. If a South Indian restaurant gets their dosa right (crispy, not too thick, served with fresh coconut chutney and sambar), everything else will likely be good too.

Kerala Cuisine: The Fish Curry Wild Card

A couple of Kerala-style restaurants have appeared in Phuket in recent years, and they're worth seeking out if you like fish-forward Indian cooking. Kerala fish curry in coconut milk, prawn moilee, and appam (fermented rice pancakes) pair beautifully with Phuket's abundance of fresh seafood. Prices are in the same range as North Indian restaurants — ฿300–฿600 per person for a full meal.

Indian Food Delivery in Phuket

Most established Indian restaurants in Bang Tao and Phuket Town are on GrabFood and FoodPanda. Delivery quality is hit or miss — naan doesn't travel well (it goes soft), but biryani, curries, and rice dishes survive delivery admirably. For the full experience, eating in is better, but when you're deep in monsoon season and don't want to drive in the rain, delivery is a perfectly viable option.

Cooking Indian Food at Home in Phuket

If you prefer cooking at home — or if you've been living here long enough that restaurant Indian feels like a splurge — you can source most Indian ingredients in Phuket. Rimping Supermarket in Cherng Talay stocks a reasonable range of spices, lentils, basmati rice, and canned goods. Several Indian grocery stores near Laguna carry specialty items: ghee, atta flour, fresh paneer, specific chilli varieties, and packaged spice blends.

Fresh curry leaves are available at the Phuket weekend market (Naka Weekend Market) and some wet markets in Phuket Town. Getting the right whole spices — cumin seeds, coriander seeds, black cardamom — is easy from Indian grocery shops. The one thing you'll struggle with is finding genuinely good quality paneer outside of specialist stores, but many expats make their own from the widely available full-fat milk.

Halal Indian Options in Phuket

Phuket has a significant Muslim population, particularly in the south of the island around Rawai and Chalong, and there are good halal Indian restaurants throughout the island. Most halal options are North Indian in style — the chicken tikka masala, lamb curries, and biryani are all halal-certified. Patong's tourist strip has several halal Indian options clearly marked. In Phuket Town's Muslim quarter near Saphan Hin, you'll find modest but excellent halal Indian-style food alongside southern Thai Muslim dishes.

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