7 Best Restaurants in Koh Samui, The Gulf Coast Beaches

Mere feet from lapping waves, this perennial favorite serves the freshest seafood at reasonable prices. The purple baby-octopus soup and the sour curry with local turmeric and fish are two great options.

This beachfront diner serves salads and sandwiches, both traditional and inventive. Among the latter are tasty vegetarian sandwiches baked inside a bread bowl.

A pair of fine-dining vets from Poland are behind this cutting-edge café, which leans heavily on crowd-pleasing Western food made with quality ingredients. They were at first known for their beef-tongue burgers, which were a tough sell to a casual beach crowd, but a gourmet Wagyu option is now the attention-grabber.

This two-story seafood restaurant has been feeding Mae Nam residents for decades. The menu changes daily depending on the day's catch. Its most famous dish, stir-fried crab with black pepper, is highly recommended.

Everything on the menu at this well-run Lamai restaurant is excellent. The venue doesn't reinvent the wheel. Instead, the onus is on classic Thai dishes cooked well and with love. Extra marks go to the ambience, which sees parties dine in individual wooden salas (pavilions) in a verdant tropical garden. 

For elegant French cooking, try this small waterfront bistro whose owner moved here from Nice. The three-course tasting menu might include such delicacies as a shark with pineapple entrée, along with a salad and dessert.

Organic vegetables take center stage at this teak and art-dominated place led by an acclaimed chef from Berlin. Begin your day with a freshly packed jar of chia pudding, a superfood bowl, or a chili-spiked Thai Greens smoothie, and come back later for an encyclopedic array of clean eats.