Thanying Restaurant

Thanying Restaurant serves Royal Thai cuisine in an intimate setting of just 30 tables. It's a nondescript building in between Amara Sanctuary Resort Lobby and Tier Bar, you can only tell from a tiny wooden sign bearing its name lit-up by a single lamp at night when its open for business. Despite being really difficult to find, the restaurant was almost full when I was there for dinner.

These 2 house residents were at the entrance of Thanying Restaurant to greet us, no full exhibition of plumage though. Not that we didn't try to coax a response from them, these peacocks are fully accustomed to humans.

Complimentary lemongrass tea for hotel guests. Local bank cards get 10% off the final bill.

Miang Kha Naa for appetizer, that is the highlight of our entire meal. It embodies all the reasons we love Thai food at all.

The chef only had 2 soups that night, a clear prawn tom yam and a coconut fish tom yam. Both soups were good but my fave was the fish version, soo rich & creamy, soo soothing on a rainy evening.

The green curry came and we were soo busy eating I didn't take pics of the rest of the food that arrived later. All I can say is the chef is happy to oblige popular thai dishes that are not on the menu and plain rice costs $6! But this meal was totally worth the calories and heartburn.

How to get here is a little tricky. When you turn into Amara Santuary Resort, you will first see Tier Bar with pool tables & free kacang puteh. I caught another peacock roaming around the bar.

The next building is Thanying Restaurant that is accessed via a side door.

After that is the Resort lobby, where you will be greeted with this refreshments table. The house mint tea is refreshing, kinda unique. This being a resort and not hotel, there are lots of outdoor areas (non-air-conditioned) that you have to walk through. Not really a place to be too fussy about, if you don't mind getting out in the sun or rain for a bit, its nice & quiet with charm. I liked the big windows in the rooms that opened up completely so you can hear the birds chirping and get a bit of that sea breeze.