Dara Cuisine Phuket offers dining with a side of stargazing

Earlier this year, Anantara Layan Phuket Resort launched a lagoon-side dining and stargazing experience. Zaneta Cheng visits Dara Cuisine Phuket and reports back 

In Thai, “dara” is the word for star. It can take the meaning of both celebrity and the celestial phenomenon in the sky. Recently, Anantara Layan Phuket Resort, a star in its own right among luxury properties on the island, unveiled Dara Cuisine Phuket and its unique dining-meets-stargazing concept. Occupying a strip of beachfront along the upscale Laguna area in the northwest, the resort overlooks the Andaman Sea, which is where Dara takes its inspiration. 

Paying homage to the Andaman seafarers who used the stars for navigation, Dara is a modern Thai restaurant that serves fare drawn from across the country’s diverse culinary heritage. Deliberately nestled on a lagoon with nary an obstruction surrounding it, the restaurant is also the new home of a rooftop Sky Observatory where guests can enjoy a taste of post-dinner stargazing. 

As the buggy pulls up to the restaurant, which is situated in a newer section of the resort where residences and facilities are being built to update and expand the offerings of the 22-year-old property, guests are treated to a gleaming glass house. Fairy lights twinkle around the trees at the entrance, where we’re treated to a quick zodiac reading before being led into the brightly lit dining room. The interiors are lined in mahogany woods with carvings and rice grains alongside floor-to-ceiling glass windows and steel cladding. 

We start off with an amuse bouche, which is dreamt up daily by chef Supakarn Lienpanich, affectionately referred to as “Hong”. Specialities from all four regions of Thailand are included on the menu as well as a robata grill, with chefs visible to diners throughout the meal at the open kitchen at the other end of the room. 

One of the most memorable dishes has to be the lobster tail tom yum soup served through a coffee syphon where the broth is steeped in herbs for stronger flavour. Chef Hong is a fan of flavour and the pungent qualities of Thai food stand in sharp relief with every dish. From the charcoal grill, the Moo Ping pork belly is dressed in sweet sticky soy sauce and nam jim jaew, a classic Thai meat dipping sauce made from fish sauce, sugar and tamarind. There’s also Fak Thong, a pumpkin that’s presented whole and hollowed, with the filling rendered in mash and chip form alongside toasted pumpkin seeds with a sweet soy glaze. 

Of course, one cannot visit a dining establishment serving Thai food and not opt for curry. There is Moohong Phuket, a slow-cooked pork belly curry local to the area, but also Massaman beef cheek curry with roasted organic sweet potato. To soak up the decadent sauce is Kao Yum, a rice salad unique to Dara served on a lotus leaf to reflect the waterscape around the restaurant. The dish is mixed tableside and is a gorgeous cacophony of fresh crisp vegetables and crunchy rice. 

Before anyone knows it, the table is heaving with dishes, all sizeable plates. But the menu is so extensive and the flavours so memorable, it’s hard not to allow the eyes to be much bigger than the stomach and order more dessert on top of what is a veritable feast. Mango sticky rice is a given but there’s a coconut dumpling with coconut cream that looks good and the Thong Yod, which is essentially a lemon custard crème brûlée. We get all of it. 

Right before tea and right after the sweets is when the restaurant’s Sky Storyteller takes guests up to the roof for stargazing. After they point out constellations and celestial formations that are visible to the naked eye, the doors to the Ash telescope, also currently the largest telescope in Phuket, are opened. Inside the dome that is the Dara Observatory, the telescope takes us so close to the moon that we can see its craters and its facets. Even when clouds begin to cover the night sky, there are Oculus headsets that bring guests into a virtual intergalactic world. 

The experience ends with guests being brought back down for tea, while waiting for their buggy to pick them up. Satiated and dreaming of stars, everyone is guaranteed an excellent night’s sleep. 

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