Hat Yai Food and Restaurants - Page 1

Ten Good Places To Eat In Hat Yai

The following nine pages contain a lot of information about eating options in Hat Yai. But perhaps it is too much information, or perhaps you don't have time to read it all?

In that case I have simplified everything and just created a list of 10 places that I consider are worth eating at in Hat Yai.

Ten Good Places To Eat In Hat Yai

I also listed some coffee shops where I like to sit down and relax.

Ten Relaxing Coffee Shops In Hat Yai

Return to top of page

Introduction

Hat Yai doesn't have a fraction of the dining choices that Bangkok has to offer, but it's not bad. Supply always matches demand, and that applies just as much to food as it does to everything else. Hat Yai doesn't attract many farang tourists and the result is that good, authentic farang food is limited.

Muslim restaurants in Hat Yai

It's not like being in Bangkok, Phuket or Pattaya where you can find lots of great Western food as a result of the large farang expat populations.

Hat Yai itself has a large Chinese-Thai population and the majority of visitors from Malaysia and Singapore are also ethnic-Chinese. Consequently, there are many Chinese restaurants.

For farang visitors used to the Westernised Chinese food they eat at home, the Chinese food in Asia is quite different. Songkhla, being one of the Southern provinces, also has a large Muslim population so there are many Muslim restaurants. These are very different to the Chinese restaurants so all tastes are catered for.

The Muslim restaurants sell Halal food and offer a variety of cuisines - Thai, Malaysian and Indian. They are found everywhere around Hat Yai but certain areas seem to have higher concentrations. There is a cluster of Muslim restaurants around the junction of Thanon Niyomrat and Niphat Uthit 1 Road (Map 3).

Dim Sum is another Chinese favourite and restaurants selling it can be found everywhere in Hat Yai. Each dish is a fixed price and prices tend to be higher in the tourist areas. It's commonly eaten for breakfast with most places only open from 6am to 11am, but others stay open all day.

American junk food has become popular in Asia so there are the usual chain restaurants in town to satisfy these tastes. MacDonalds, KFC and Pizza Hut are all prominently located at Lee Gardens Plaza right in the centre of town. These places are also very popular with young Thais.

I used to be very critical of American fast food restaurants in Thailand but I have to admit that after spending quite a long time here they can be welcome relief on occasions. Eating rice and noodles day-after-day can get a tad boring and sometimes a pizza or burger just hits the spot.

Street food is everywhere and it's really cheap. Fried rice or fried dishes on steamed rice cost between Bt30 and Bt40. Gwy-tiew (noodles) are also very popular. Despite the street stalls not looking very clean, they are normally fairly safe.

Return to top of page

Restaurants Categorised By Food Type

The main restaurant listings in the following pages are listed by restaurant name in alphabetical order. If you are looking for a particular type of food and don't know the names of restaurants, the following guide might be useful. Just click on any restaurant name for more details.

I have eaten at every restaurant listed here at least once, and a few I have eaten at many, many times. Restaurants marked with an * are personal favourites.

Return to top of page

Farang Breakfast Food

For farangs passing through Hat Yai, one of the problems can be what to eat for breakfast. I have met quite a few foreigners looking around for something to eat early in the day. Most Westerners prefer bread, eggs and coffee in the morning rather than rice porridge or a spicy fish curry.

Chinese dim sum is a big favourite in Hat Yai

The big hotels offer 'Western breakfasts' as do some smaller restaurants, but some of these places are out of the way and difficult to find. In addition, the Western breakfasts at most of these places are disappointing. The eggs are fine (difficult to go wrong with) but that's about it. Thai versions of ham and bacon aren't particularly good and the bread tastes sweet. Even the bread from some places that call themselves bakeries isn't that good. Additionally, the breakfasts are so small that they always leave me feeling hungry.

An English friend told me that The Swan does a very good English breakfast, but whenever I tried to get breakfast there in the morning it was always closed. The mystery was solved when I went to The Swan one lunchtime and spoke to the owner, Khun O.

The Swan breakfast menu

They do indeed serve a full English 'all day' breakfast and it looks great, however, there is one small catch. They don't start serving it until the pub opens at 11am, which is closer to lunchtime than breakfast. This is fine for people who can wait until 11am before they eat breakfast, but I am used to eating breakfast a lot earlier.

The Irish Pub is exactly the same. Pictures of their English breakfast options in the menu look very tasty but, like The Swan, the Irish Pub doesn't open until 11am. At both places, 'breakfast' isn't available until almost lunchtime.

Breakfast at McDonalds is reliable because the food is exactly the same at every branch of McDonalds in the world. An egg McMuffin in Hat Yai is the same as an egg McMuffin in Boise, Idaho. However, be warned. I went through a period of intense craving for Western food and ended up eating at McDonalds a lot. The result was several unwanted kilos of fat around my midriff.

On one early visit downtown McDonalds was full of Malaysian tourists and there was a long wait to be served. I gave McDonalds a miss that day and headed out to find somewhere else. I ended up at Daothiam, which is where I used to go for breakfast a lot when I first came to Hat Yai.

Daothiam has quite a good breakfast menu, the food isn't bad, prices are reasonable, and it's convenient if you are staying in the downtown area.

The Train Hotel restaurant at the railway station used to serve a decent breakfast, but standards have now dropped and these days the breakfast is quite disappointing.

Nakorn Nai Big Dish Breakfast ... with spinach

Nakorn Nai, which has been around forever and never changes, is another place that is quite reliable for breakfast. They have various choices, including the Nakorn Nai Big Dish Breakfast for Bt130. Apart from the portion of spinach that it arrives with, it's quite good and the price includes unlimited refills of tea or coffee.

In 2018 a new Western breakfast place opened. The chef (who is a friend of my wife's) worked in Koh Samui for 10 years and knows how to cook proper Western breakfasts. See Ong Tong.

Return to top of page

Local Breakfast Food

To really get your day kick-started a glass of the local coffee should do the trick. They call it 'Kopi', which I think is a Malaysian term, or 'gaa fair dum' (black coffee). It is thick and black, almost having the consistency of mud. The locals drink it with lots of sugar but I don't like it sickly sweet so request - 'mai sai naam dtaan' (without sugar). I like it with some milk but even the condensed milk they use is sweetened so there is no getting away from a sweet taste.

Traditional style coffee in Hat Yai

There are various places around town but the photo was taken at a small place on Duangchan Road, opposite the Inter Hotel (Map 3). They also sell Dim Sum between 6am and 11am at just 10 Baht per portion.

Return to top of page

Vegetarian Food

I was introduced to vegetarian food in Hat Yai by a good friend who is vegetarian. She's a local Hat Yai girl so knows the area very well. I was quite surprised at how many places there were catering to vegetarians, and also surprised that I hadn't noticed them before.

Vegetarian food in Hat Yai

I've heard and read comments that vegetarian restaurants are difficult to find in Hat Yai. They can indeed be difficult to find but they are there. In 2014 I revisited places I had previously listed on this site and found that several vegetarian restaurants had closed, moved or merged. I updated the entries accordingly.

As in Phuket and other places, Hat Yai holds a big Chinese vegetarian festival every year during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar (late September/early October, but Western calendar dates change from year to year). This is when religious devotees perform strange rituals which involve damaging their own bodies.

The Thai word for vegetarian food in Hat Yai

The vegetarian festival activities in Hat Yai are centred along Supasarnrungsarn Road and during this time many carnivorous restaurants will close for a week. Eating vegetarian food is considered by many Thais (especially Chinese Thais) to be an act of merit-making (tum-buun) so even non-vegetarians will observe a vegetarian diet during the festival.

For a list of vegetarian restaurants in Hat Yai see Restaurants Categorised By Food Type.

Return to top of page

Halal Food

There are a lot of Thai Muslims in the southern Thai provinces and many visitors to Hat Yai from Malaysia and Indonesia are also Muslim. Because of this, Halal food is easy to find in Hat Yai. Muslim restaurants are easily identifiable from the signs outside and/or the veiled female staff. If you eat at a restaurant that is obviously run by Muslims then you don't need to worry about the food being Halal.

Halal certificate in Hat Yai

Some restaurants that serve various different types of cuisine (such as Saneha restaurant at the Novotel hotel) display a certificate awarded by the Central Islamic Committee of Thailand indicating that the restaurant is certified to serve Halal food.

A Muslim reader of this site - who is also a frequent visitor to Thailand - informed me that all major restaurant chains in Thailand, such as Kentucky Fried Chicken, Chester's Grill, McDonalds, etc, use only officially Halal certified chicken.

To find restaurants on this site that serve Halal food look at the 'Restaurants Categorised By Food Type' section below. Additionally, my Food Sitemap and all individual restaurant listing will show if a restaurant serves Halal food.

Most Buddhist Thais love pork (apparently, the Buddha's last meal was pork), as do Chinese, and there are many ethnic Chinese in Hat Yai - both resident and visiting tourists.

I stopped eating pork at small restaurants after I arrived in Thailand as a result of visiting the local 'fresh' markets. It was at these markets that I saw unrefrigerated pork covered in flies for sale in temperatures of 90+ degrees. The sight and the smell put me off eating pork for good.

I still eat bacon and sausages containing pork bought from supermarkets because I have a little more confidence in the hygiene standards used in their production.

Even after I stopped eating pork I would find that when small restaurants gave me a bowl of soup with my meal it would often be made from pig bones. If you have a similar aversion to eating pork in Thailand, be careful about the food you are given at restaurants.

Return to top of page

The Hat Yai Coffee Shop Craze And Starbucks

Most Thais are followers, not leaders; imitators, not innovators. If they see something that looks like a good idea, they all follow suit.

Abah Coffee, Hat Yai

When the Jatukham Ramathep amulet craze swept the country, every new shop that opened in Hat Yai was opened specifically to sell Jatukham Ramathep amulets, and almost all existing businesses - from restaurants to pharmacies - started selling Jatukham Ramathep amulets alongside their regular goods. It was a joke, and absolutely nothing to do with Buddhism even though some shops advertised themselves as selling 'Buddhist amulets'.

The Jatukham Ramathep craze fizzled out, naturally, and the Thais started looking to see what the next craze would be. They decided on coffee shops (and later Japanese restaurants). A few years ago there were just a few coffee shops in Hat Yai - places like Ome Bake House, Ep's and the Bakery Box. Now, they are everywhere.

Starbucks, Hat Yai

Technology also played a part. Most coffee shops have a free Wi-Fi connection so that customers can play Facebook while drinking their coffee.

Despite the plethora of coffee shops in town, it took a long time for possibly the world's best known coffee shop to arrive.

Coffeebucks in Songkhla

German friends of mine came to visit in January 2013 and wanted to drink coffee at Starbucks. Hat Yai didn't have a branch of Starbucks at the time, but a branch opened shortly after they left at the beginning of April 2013.

Like all big chains, the Hat Yai branch of Starbucks is no different to Starbucks anywhere else. Some drinks cost the equivalent of half a day's wages for some Thais, but nonetheless it still does a lot of business. It is located on the ground floor of Odean department store near Lee Gardens Plaza.

Latitude: N 07° 00' 15.2" (N 07° 00.253')

Longitude: E 100° 28' 16.8" (E 100° 28.280')

Google Maps: Street Map or Satellite View

After not having a branch of Starbucks for such a long time, a second branch opened inside Central Festival at the end of 2013.

Starbucks Central Festival, Hat Yai

Starbucks in Hat Yai opens daily from 7am until 10pm.

Return to top of page

The Japanese Food Craze

This craze followed the coffee shop craze. When I first visited Hat Yai in 2002 there wasn't much Japanese food available. There were a couple of branches of Fuji (excellent but a little expensive), and a few cheaper options, for example, Kiriko and Mariko.

The craze for Japanese food seemed to start some time in 2008 and accelerated in 2009. Every small new restaurant that opened seemed to sell Japanese food. There are even conveyor Sushi restaurants in Hat Yai nowadays.

This is good news. Japanese food is good but it used to be quite an expensive meal. With all these new restaurants opening it means being able to get Japanese food for not much more than you would pay for Thai food.

Return to top of page

Transliteration Of Thai names

I started writing this site before I could read Thai and because some places only have their name written in Thai I had to rely on Thais to help me.

Food sign, Hat Yai

Unfortunately, Thais have no idea how to transliterate Thai names into English. This is something that I am in the process of correcting.

Where restaurants have made an attempt at transliterating their own name into English I have kept their version (even if it is bad). With road names I have either used the version on the restaurant business card or the version used on the map.

Fried chicken feet, Hat Yai

In cases where there was no English transliteration I have transliterated myself using a system that is more phonetically accurate than other systems. This method gives native speakers the greatest chance of being understood by a Thai, unlike the 'official' system of transliteration which is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Return to top of page

Hat Yai Restaurant Listings

The rest of this page and the following eight pages provide details of individual restaurants in Hat Yai, including some of my own personal impressions. Of course, the type of food we all like is very subjective so even if I don't like a particular type of food it doesn't mean that you won't.

For each listing there is a feedback section where you can provide your own comments. I really appreciate feedback and these comments make this site more useful to other people.