January 2014: Luxury hotel, Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui, has launched a new dining destination offering authentic local cuisine and wines, called Koh. Located amid a plantation of coconut palms and cooled by breezes, Koh Thai Kitchen & Bar offers a unique setting.
The restaurant is an open-sided, open-air dining venue which offers a contemporary space that is distinctly Thai in style. Helmed by Executive Chef Alex Garés, Koh goes back to the roots of some of the island’s favourite dishes. Chef Garés and Sous Chef Sumalee Khunpet have come up with a menu that is authentic and straightforward, but which also introduces less familiar Thai recipes and flavours.
With a strong focus on seafood, and with many products sourced locally, the menu includes items such as local oysters with hot tamarind leaves, crispy shallots, garlic and lime; raw prawns with lime and chili; and tom kati talay coconut soup with seafood, tamarind and kaffir lime leaves. Meat-eaters should try the grilled quail marinated in curry with eggplant; dry red curry with chicken, cashew nuts, sweet basil and lime leaves; and slow-cooked pork trotters with five spice, pickled cabbage and kale. Vegetarians aren’t forgotten here, with a separate menu available including dishes such as wok-fried bindweed with garlic and egg; and straw mushroom salad with Thai herbs, cracked rice and chili powder. Incredibly, the menu changes every three days.
Koh Bar boasts of the widest selection of Thai wines by the glass on the island as well as a carefully curated menu of more than 50 Old World and New World labels. Classily choreographed cocktails are also on the menu, and wines have been selected to match Thai dishes. With copper wine walls, a dramatic onyx bar, and steel-and-rattan chandeliers inspired by birds’ nests, Koh Bar is Koh Samui’s newest hangout.
Koh is open daily for lunch and dinner.
