After getting off our ferry boat on Ban Phe pier from our recent trip to Koh Samet my wife and I got a bit hungry. It was time for afternoon lunch. But we didn’t know where to go eat. And we were hunkering for seafood too. We wanted fresh crabs but for some reason the restaurants we went to on Koh Samet had none available.
So we asked around the locals working inside a market. Who else would know better than the locals right? And one of them pointed at a restaurant right across the street from us. Its name is Beach Cafe Seafood Ban Phe. It was only about 80 meters away from the entrance of Ban Phe Municipality Pier and across from Ban Phe Tourists Market.
Nice iced cafe latte, not too sweet as ordered, about 50THB…
My wife and I were a bit dubious. We were expecting a place with good seafood would probably be right on a beach or perhaps on a pier overlooking the ferry boats. But we were hungry. And we also wanted coffee. We figured worst comes to worst if the place didn’t look copacetic we’ll just get a couple of iced lattes to go.
They had a espresso machine and grounded the beans fresh for our order. Well that’s a good sign. So while we waited for our lattes we asked to take a look at their menu. There’s the usual Thai food but we wanted to know if they had any crabs available.
Usually on a weekday we know restaurants don’t stock a lot of live seafood. They usually do on weekends when they know there will be more customers. Luckily they had crabs available. But were they fresh??
Yes! They’ve got fresh crabs, this is chili style…
They charge 700THB per kilogram of crabs. Not a bad price at all. And they’ll cook it to whatever style you like. Steamed, curried, chili, salt and pepper you name it – they did it and price was included. We ordered one kilogram – half steamed and half chili style.
Fresh steamed crabs… on the small side but were still good…
We also ordered some shrimp fritters and rice. We were hungry but we also didn’t want to over order because we just weren’t sure if this restaurant had good food. They did have some other customers at another table but not a lot.
Fried shrimp fritters (Tod Mun Gung ทอดมันกุ้ง)… so yummy…
The chili crabs came out first and we dug in. It looked good and it really smelled good. And it was fresh. The crab meat was sweet and with the chili sauce it was a pleasant combination. The steamed crabs came out a few minutes later. They were on the small side so had no crab roe which I love. But I think it wasn’t the right season for crabs so that’s not the fault of the restaurant. The plate of steam crabs was also very good and so fresh. Crab meat was really tender.
Overall we really enjoyed our meal. If I can remember correctly I think the total bill came out to about 950THB. And that’s not a bad price at all for fresh crabs.
But what we really like was the friendly service from the restaurant staff. They pretty much cleaned up our table when ever we made a mess. Alright, whenever I made a mess. Hey – it’s crab with yummy chili sauce. Hands will get dirty. Still not sure how my wife eats crabs with fork and spoon.
