Chef Jim Ophorst hops aboard an electric buggy and quietly motors inland. His kitchen team arrives soon after him on a fleet of bicycles and buggies. Phuket’s morning sun shimmers on the surface of a pond and lights up the deep green of the surrounding forest.
This is a ritual for Ophorst, chef of PRU, the first and only Michelin-starred restaurant in Phuket. Each morning, he visits Pru Jampa, the restaurant’s 96-hectare organic farm, to pluck produce for his plates. The goods that he and his team gather – snow peas, mulberries, Japanese cucumber, mint and more – make up the bones of PRU’s “farm-to-fork” dining experience. What they can’t grow, they buy from wet markets, farmers and fishermen. Sometimes, they forage for ingredients, too.
“We try to support the whole community. We search for people and suppliers who are not known by other restaurants to present their products or show their work through our restaurant,” says Ophorst, who was was part of PRU’s opening team in 2016 and one of Phuket’s earliest adopters of sustainability initiatives, especially in the food business. “Even the artwork we display at the restaurant is a collaborative exhibition with local artists.”
The restaurant’s progressive initiatives have made it Thailand’s first to earn a Michelin Green Star, an accolade reserved for venues at the vanguard of sustainability. PRU has received a Green Star three years in a row.
Ophorst says that restaurants worth travelling for have begun to open here year after year, citing examples like the fermentation-focused Hom and fine-casual southern Thai spot Laad. Most, he notes, employ initiatives to reduce their carbon footprint, whether it’s sourcing locally or reducing food waste and water consumption.
Prior to the pandemic, Phuket was synonymous with luxury resorts and gorgeous – if overcrowded – beaches for some, and gritty nightlife and street food for others. But now Phuket has exciting new claims to fame, and fine dining is only the start.
Phuket’s sustainability-minded new chapter
Tourism makes up nearly 50 percent of Phuket’s economy, and the pandemic years were devastating. Border shutdowns brought business to a halt, and unemployment climbed to around 10% in 2021, according to the National Statistical Office. At the same time, green sea turtles returned to nest, and it was once again possible to enjoy golden hour without having to rub shoulders with hundreds of sun-crisped strangers.
With the island at its quietest, hospitality groups started initiatives to support local fishermen, farmers and unemployed service workers. Island leaders amplified their sustainability pledges. Phuket had never been so connected as a community.
“For the longest time on Phuket, it was about nice hotels and keeping people on the beach. That’s great, but there’s more to the island”
And though 14 million people visited Phuket in 2023, more than 100 times the population of 79,000, some hospitality leaders believe there’s hope for sustained change. According to Bill Barnett, founder and managing director of hospitality consultancy C9 Hotelworks and founding advisor of the Phuket Hotels Association (PHA) – a group of 94 hotels engaged in community and environmental development initiatives – the numbers don’t tell the whole story.
Aside from restaurants like PRU, which are drastically reducing their carbon footprint, Phuket is “pioneering sustainability in [other] ways,” Barnett says.
Whether it’s bringing in battery-operated vehicles or helping to retrofit properties so they can use biofuels, the PHA has helped hotels transition to greener practices. “We really stress the economic imperative [to get hotels to buy in]. While you’re making your hotel more profitable, you’re also benefiting the local farmer and the broader market,” Barnett tells me.
“When we start new hotel projects or real estate developments, we tell our clients that sustainability advisors need to be at the table when the architect is there.”
Those efforts may have helped to ignite a paradigm shift. Barnett points to Tri Vananda for example. Scheduled to open by 2025, the wellness-focused resort and residences are built on a former tin mine. The developers, the Montara Hospitality Group, who also own Trisara, where PRU is located, created gardens, farms and ponds that provide produce, water and community spaces for guests and residents. They also built a protected wetland and committed to developing only 15 percent of the land.
Barnett notes that many existing properties are changing the way they are run. The InterContinental Phuket in Kamala now captures and treats rainwater for use in toilets and irrigates its gardens with recycled wastewater. It also installed electric vehicle chargers for guests. The Slate, on Nai Yang Beach, uses African nightcrawlers to help manage food waste and create compost for its gardens. And at Keemala near Kamala Beach – already long considered one of Phuket’s greenest hotels – all the fabrics and textiles found on the property are produced by indigenous groups in Thailand.
Making Phuket a home for creatives
Sustainability aside, new cultural initiatives such as the Junkyard Theatre are also positively impacting the local community and expanding Phuket’s claims to fame.
Hiding behind a garden of monstera plants and ferns, the theatre is not what you would expect to find in the residential Ratsada district. Each Saturday, local performers take to a stage upcycled from literal junk – bits and bobs collected from scrapyards – to riff on Phuket culture in a show that evolves slightly from week to week.
As crowds tuck into three-course meals, singers belt out show tunes under a sign that says “Suzy Wong’s” – a nod to Patong Beach’s colourful nightlife. There’s a choreographed dance-slash-fight in a Muay Thai ring. Sometimes, breakdancers who used to busk in Patong a year ago join the show. You never know what to expect.
“We don’t care about being too perfect. We want to use humour to connect with people and entertain,” says the cabaret’s creative director, Zac Underwood.
Zac is the son of commercial fabricators John and Judy Underwood. Since the late 1990s, the family has run a workshop on Phuket where they upcycle scrap into immaculate décor for luxury hotels such as Shinta Mani Wild in Cambodia and the Tree House Villas on Koh Yao Noi. In 2020, the three had an epiphany.
“For years, we had staged these elaborate dinner parties for friends. We would create props and sets and serve food and drinks,” says Zac. “We’ve always had a passion for recycling and building things from objects that people don’t perceive any value in.”
During the pandemic, Zac says he noticed many local performers out of work, “and it just clicked.”
They gathered scrap goods, contacted performers and got to work. Now, their side project is a hit with locals, expats and tourists alike for the way it reflects the soul of the island. With its clever stage design and tight-knit cast, this one-of-a-kind show marks a shift in the kind of entertainment offerings that Phuket provides.
“We don’t care about being too perfect. We want to use humour to connect with people”
“I grew up on the island. When I was a kid, we didn’t have a cultural scene – there weren’t galleries, shows or theatre performances. For us, it was a bit of a push to fill that void and not do it in the same way as other cabarets on the island,” says Zac. “Any destination has to have many sides to it to keep people coming back. For the longest time on Phuket, it was about nice hotels and keeping people on the beach. That’s great, but there’s more to the island [than just that].”
Junkyard Theatre is not the one pushing creative boundaries on the Thai island. Local craft beer maker FullMoon Brewworks is in the midst of building a farm-brewery in Mai Khao where they’ll offer tours and tastings of experimental beers made with the island’s fruit and herbs. Meanwhile, expatriate creatives Austin Bush and Christopher Wise’s Phuket Town store, OMG (Outstanding Market Goods), which sells locally made products, has begun to host pop-up dinners and workshops in its grunge-chic space.
As Phuket’s dining scene, sustainability-minded projects and eclectic activities begin to blossom under the watch of its forward-thinking creative class, the island’s reputation for easy-money attractions like elephant shows and jet ski rides fade into the sunset, ushering in a new face of tourism that’s centred on sustainability and focused on the future.
For our full list on things to do and places to see in Phuket, check out our Phuket City Guide. For more information on Singapore Airlines flights to Phuket, visit the official website.
