Raft up to Black Ginger to get a taste of Thailand’s Andaman Coast

“Set in a stunning traditional northern Thai house, Black Ginger offers diners a unique, enchanting experience. Part of The Slate hotel, which stands along Phuket’s Nai Yang Lagoon Beach, Black Ginger with its THB 3,000 per person, dinner-only degustation menu is clearly an “occasion restaurant”. The Black Ginger deck at twilight The restaurant gets its name from a particular type of black ginger that’s been used as both food and medicine for over a thousand years in Thailand. While the former is a tasty, if a tad oily, dish of deep fried cha-plu or betel leaves and tiger prawns with a sweet-spicy side sauce, the latter is a derivative of a Fujianese-style fresh spring roll stuffed with minced pork and mushrooms, brought to Phuket by immigrants from China’s Fujian province. But what’s uniquely Thai and more so Phuket is the full-bodied, rustic crab jungle curry with zesty betel leaf, called gaeng pou bai cha-plu, which is served to me with a side of fragrant pandan rice.