Restaurant Review

      The southeastern coast of Phuket boasts some fine seafood restaurants. From Rawal, at the southernmost end of the island, up to Soi Parlai, where Phuket Zoo is located, there are any number of open-air dining locations, ranging from the exotic Evason Hotel to hidden-away locations down kilometre-long dirt tracks. For the visitor, half the fun finding the best places.

      Two of the longest  established seafood eateries in Phuket are Kan Eang I & 2, both to be found in Chalong and both established for a hefty 20 years. Kan Eang means roughy "let yourself go" or "have a good time", so with that translation in mind, we headed down to Kan Eang 2 last Friday night.

      The first thing that strikes the vtsitor about this restaurant is that it's enommous. With its 200 tables and a sizeable staff, Kan Eang can handle 1,000 people at a time. Luckiy for us, it was quiet when we arrived so we were able to choose a table right on the sea front. Then again, unluckily for us, the usual crisp February northeasterly breeze was reduced to an occasional waft of damp warm air so our placing wasn't the invigorating experience that it would be under normal circumstances.

      The long beachside tables at Kan Eang are conducive to the Thai way of dining: that is to order many different dishes at a time and to share them. So it was that the table was soon laden with sweet 'n' sour red snapper. Phuket lobster and grilled snapper, a seafood salad and rice, along with two mixed salads that could have fed the Thai Navy. Don't get the wrong impression about Kan Eang 2, though We could easily have ordered chicken and beef dishes, but who wants to do that, sitting by the sea?

      The sweet 'n' sour was right-on, the salads huge, the lobster just-so and the geilled snapped, although it took longer to prepare, was rich and hearty in taste. Given one vote for the best dish, I'd have opted for the sweet 'n' sour, but that was mainly because I wasn't expecting a whole fish to arrive under a layer of pineapples, tomatoes, onions and sauce. It came as a nice surprise to have such a huge version of my favourite fish dish instead of a skimpy "will-that-do?" portion.

      At about 9 'o clock, a coachload of Japanese arrived and occupied a central part of the restaurant and, amazingly, were already spirited away by the time we decided to up-anchor and head home to look up: "Can you please take your foot off mine?" in our Japanese-English dictionaries. In other words, Kan Eang isn't intimate dining at its zenith, but it does deliver a mean fresh seafood platter. Best to dine early at this location.