Raya

Raya, a longstanding restaurant in Phuket Town, is largely known for its crab meat curry with coconut milk—a vast, decadent bowl that blends a spicy, turmeric-tinged coconut curry and massive chunks of lump crab meat served with knots of rice noodles. But it’s also one of only a handful of places in Thailand to get Baba cuisine, a blend of Chinese and Thai ingredients, dishes, and culinary techniques. 

Chinese seafarers have been visiting the Andaman Sea coast for centuries, having established outposts most notably in Singapore and in Melaka and Penang, in Malaysia. Over the centuries, local and Chinese cultures overlapped in these places, forming a new one. 

Known as Peranakans or Baba-Nyonya in Singapore and Malaysia, on this island, descendants of these traders are sometimes referred to as Phuket Babas. Phuket Town is one of only a few places in Thailand where Baba culture was established, and the only place in the country where elements of it can still be found today.

These days, the menu at Raya extends to central Thailand and mainland China, but dishes such as muu hawng, fatty chunks of pork braised with soy sauce and black pepper, and naam phrik kung siap, a Thai-style dip combining dried shrimp, herbs and chili, showcase Phuket Town’s Baba roots. And that headlining crab curry also has its origins in a blend of Chinese and Southeast Asian cooking styles, albeit a more contemporary one, dating back to the current owner’s childhood.