At Jaras, the InterContinental Phuket Resort’s beachfront fine dining restaurant, the focus is a noble one: championing habitat-conscious and ecologically pure ingredients in order to craft a wholly unique Southern Thai tasting menu. It’s educational and entertaining but – most important of all – it’s also delicious.
Adhering to a zero-waste philosophy, and integrating eco-purity in every aspect of its operations, the mission at Jaras restaurant is to present authentic Southern Thai flavours with a modern twist, emphasising tradition, sustainability, and culinary artistry in equal measures. The best way for you, the diner, to experience it all is by trying the 9-course ‘Taste of Jaras’ set menu (THB 3,450++), which can be ordered in tandem with a 100 percent Thai-sourced wine and cocktail pairing (THB 2,150++).
Jaras is part of the InterContinental Phuket Resort and inhabits a prime spot on the property, close to the Kamala Bay beachfront. And while there are a few outdoor tables available here, the experience indoors is perhaps best; since the restaurant is not only beautifully decorated, but you also get the feeling you’ve entered a private little world once the very visually striking set menu dinner gets fully underway.
My own visit to Jaras begins with a tour of the display area at the rear of the restaurant, where the shelves and tabletops overflow with pickling jars, flowering herbs, egg cartons, and the like. Behind it all there’s a large map of Thailand showing where the different items on the upcoming menu originate from. Of special note is Katian Farm, in Phang-nga province, which has – with the support of InterContinental Phuket Resort – been able to successfully nurture lemon and fig trees, finger lime bushes, and papaya trees, as well as edible flowers, chilis and peppers, free-roam ducks and chickens, and more. Meanwhile, the composting machine at the resort processes kitchen waste, and that gets sent back to the farm to be used in various ways.
In total, Jaras sources organic ingredients from 19 local farms, but equally as interesting is their work with the World Wide Fund for Nature International (WWF) Thailand, focussing on researching the potential of invasive flora and fauna – for which the Alternative Agriculture Network (AAN) offers recommendations for ethnobotanical implementation (which is a fancy way of saying “try turning these pesky things into fine dining ingredients”). It’s a very ingenious solution to the problem, since harvesting and eating these plant and animal invaders significantly reduces their negative impact on Thailand’s indigenous ecosystems.
Of course, chronicling the full extent of what the team at Jaras is doing in terms of sustainability would leave almost no room for actually describing their amazing food, so I’ll just add that the set dinner menu itself is printed on aromatic paper made from lemongrass, while the beautiful bronze-coloured plates used for the first few starters are made from… wait for it… broken plates mixed with organic kitchen leftovers such as oyster shells and coffee grounds. Mind-blowing!
Our set menu meal begins in earnest with a pour of GranMonte sparkling rose – a special 500 bottle cuvée created and labelled for Jaras by the acclaimed Khao Yai vineyard – which accompanies a trio of very artfully plated amuse bouches. A crispy spring roll cone of moo hong (stewed pork) is topped with pennywort – an invasive species I’m surprised to learn – while apple snail – another invasive species – is done larb style and wrapped in an edible leaf. Lastly, the centre of a yellow-petalled cucumber flower is filled with Southern mango salad and topped with horseshoe crab roe. All three are fantastic!
Next comes Chef Chalermwut “Nui” Srivolalkul’s first official menu dish: a scrumptious, bite-sized, jet-black tart made of squid parts that’s filled with squid tentacles in squid ink, as well as a salad of (invasive) water mimosa. Following this comes a serving of broadhead catfish with pak krasang – both items deemed invasive – and homemade mieang sauce, after which the dramatic and delicious ‘Giant Blue Crab Curry’ course appears.
“The first part is the crab ceviche,” explains our server, “which we serve in the crab claw shell with Thai herbs and invasive wood sorrel. For the second part we have a crispy coconut Thai-style pancake with crab meat, ginger, crab roe mousse, and mustard leaf, with some extra crab curry on the side if you want to add more.”
Since Southern Thailand, to my mind, has always been synonymous with curry, I’m happy to see it figure prominently in the next dish as well. “This one is called jor rang, a coconut milk-based curry from Phang-nga,” our server points out, as she prepares to pour some over a beautifully cooked hunk of river prawn which we learn is fresh caught – not farmed – from a river in Phatthalung. All this comes together on the plate with a side bite of pomelo salad and deep-fried shrimp chin. Terrific!
The primarily seafood theme continues with a dish of crabmeat, crab roe, and minced chicken, garnished with a fried tofu sheet, wood sorrel, and edible flowers. This is followed closely by a gaeng liang spicy soup poured into a bowl containing white prawn, forest mushroom, wild passion fruit, crispy pumpkin, and red ant egg. The soup is yet another winning dish, made even better by the fact that – as with the curry earlier – a small ceramic pitcher of the peppery broth is left on the table should you want more (and I very much did).
As we prepare for the coming entrées, our drink pairing – which so far has featured Monsoon Valley wines, Chalong Bay rhum, and Kosapan distilled spirits – now presents us with a glass of 2019 Shiraz from Issara Estates, a Khao Yai winery I’ve never tried before, but am pleased with once I do. This plummy pairing accompanies the ‘Zero Waste Kanom Jeen’ course, which takes a novel approach to noodles.
“This kanom jeen is not the normal kind of noodle,” our server points out with a grin as she lays the earthenware bowl on the table. “We make it from black chin tilapia, and invasive fish species, and we served it here with a pour over of yellow curry, which incorporates the bone and head of the fish, plus wild mixed vegetables and crispy fish skin and scales. And the noodles are topped with black caviar, from Hua Hin.”
The tilapia dish is marvelous and, as before, some surplus smoky curry is left so I can top up as needed. Then, after a lotus flower tea and tangy pink guava granita palate cleanser, we dive headlong into the fabulous final main: charcoal grilled Phuket lobster with bitter bean sauce. It’s a rather involved course, as it also includes a hot clear soup (seasoned with the lobster shell), and a side of mixed rice – three separate varieties – which is prepared tableside.
To pair with the upcoming dessert, a special sweet cocktail named ‘Banana Fizzy’ is set before us, which contains a mix of Monsson Valley sweet wine, housemade fermented banana liqueur, lime, oleo saccharum(Latin for “oil-sugar”), and Saiyok brand spring water from Kanchanaburi. This pleasant purple potion provides the accompaniment to the yummy finale: roti, hidden under heaps of cacao ice cream, with crispy malabar melastome flower (invasive), pomelo skin compote, and chocolate shavings.
As the evening wraps up with some delightful petit fours, I can safely say that saving the world never tasted so good.
Features Editor
As the Features Editor for Prestige Magazine Thailand, Canadian-born Bruce Scott keeps a close eye on what’s trending both in Bangkok and beyond. He enjoys live music, documentary films, and dinners with ..Read More
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