Mr A and I spent a week at Amanpuri at the beginning of August 2021 on a package which included Breakfast and Dinner.  We enjoyed excellent food across a wide range of locations, and superb service levels from all the waiting staff and chefs.  Let me tell you about it…. (but not in the same detail that I usually review restaurants – I was on holiday!)

Amanpuri has a Thai restaurant called Buabok, which also serves (international) breakfast, an Italian one called Arva, and, in high season, a Japanese one called Nama, which is down on beach level.  Also on the beach is a beach bar with a good food menu.  From what I gathered it’s possible for any food to be served in your Pavilion (suite) and private meals can be arranged for any location on the resort.

Our first foray into Amanpuri’s food scene came on our first afternoon whilst we were confined to our Pavilion waiting for our entry covid test results; Afternoon Tea. Between 4 and 5pm all guests are served a complimentary Thai version of this light meal, wherever on the resort they choose (including the beach).  We had an unusual selection of savoury and sweet treats, which were actually pretty tasty.  But tbh, because I’m not a big eater, I don’t usually take afternoon tea, so that I don’t lose my dinner appetite, and consequently I didn’t ask for one for the rest of the stay, although Mr A did.

On our first night, and a couple thereafter, we ate terrific Thai food in Buabok.  I can particularly commend the soft shell crab.

On our last day we took lunch at Buabok (it’s open all day) and both of us enjoyed a rather spicy Grouper larb.

Overall I found the chilli levels to be manageable, but the staff always checked how hot we wanted our food.  The food was very good and beautifully presented.  But boy did I miss a bottle of Singha or Chang to go with it, but I couldn’t, because of the covid alcohol rules in place during our stay.

We chose to eat breakfast every morning in Buabok too, where we were greeted with good capppuccini and refreshing and healthy juice mixtures.

There was a very broad a la carte selection, catering to all tastes. On our first day I tried granola and yogurt, but every other day I went for my breakfast favourite of Eggs Benedict, which was just perfect, with fresh muffins, runny eggs and good quality ham.

On a couple of nights we ate at Arva, so we had to cope without a bottle of wine in an Italian restaurant for the first time I can recall!  Arva has a good menu of regional Italian dishes using many ingredients imported from Italy, and service is the closest to ‘fine dining’ at Amanpuri.  Here are some of the dishes I enjoyed:

On our first day we mentioned to GM Nicolas that we liked Japanese food, so it was a shame Nama restaurant wasn’t open during the rainy season.  Just a short time later Amanpuri’s Executive Chef, Matteo came to introduce himself to us and made a proposal to curate and source a special Japanese Omakase dinner for us, in one of their private dining rooms. He asked us what we particularly liked, went off to check what he could source from Japan, and when, and sent us a draft menu (which we slightly amended). What excellent service, and a real pleasure for us to interact with such a young and passionate internationally experienced chef.

Our special Omakase meal was served in the ‘wine room’, a climate-controlled room at the back of the Sunset Terrace bar where some fine wines and cigars are kept.  Such a lovely room for a private meal! We had a fantastic time as we enjoyed great food and amazing service; Chef Matteo personally served each course, including some surprises which weren’t on the menu, and we had up to 4 other staff serving us at a time!  Here are a few of our dishes:

Because this was a private dinner, we were allowed to drink alcohol with it; a great treat which began with a sakura (cherry blossom)and yuzu flavoured Negroni, which was pretty special.  We also ordered a good dry Riesling to see us through the remainder of the (mostly seafood) meal.

The Miso soup was excellent, made with a superb dashi. Mr A got the recipe from Chef Matteo and successfully replicated  it when we got home.

The sashimi and sushi were very good, particularly some incredible scallops from Hokkaido which were so fresh, soft and creamy, and Ebi, raw sweet prawns, which was one of the things we’d asked Matteo to try to get hold of beforehand. And the smoked eel was divine.  I can’t recall how much this special meal cost me, but to be honest it was ‘priceless’.

By this time we were full, so we asked if the remains of the sushi could be boxed up for us to take away? They could, and they were brought up to our room, to go into our fridge.  This turned out to be a great idea, because the next day we had still-fresh and fantastically flavoursome sushi on our Pavilion terrace for lunch, with another bottle of Riesling of course!

Eating from the sunken table under our terrace sala was actually very comfortable and quite romantic, and it would be a perfect venue for an evening meal too, though we didn’t take this opportunity; see the image below.

On a couple of occasions we ate a light lunch on the beach.  Without looking at their beach menu, I began by just asking if they could do a cheese and onion toastie, which they brought to me with fries and ketchup.  It was so delicious and comforting that I had the same thing on three occasions!  But on one day I studied the beach bar’s (largely) mediterranean menu and selected what turned out to be quite a fancy Caesar salad.

I hope you’ve been able to see from this blogpost the wide variety of high quality food offered at Amanpuri, both on- and off-menu. And although it’s less easy to envisage, I hope you’ve got a sense of the wonderful warm service standards we enjoyed.