Island guide · 6 min read
Staying keto or plant-based on a Thai island
Every menu on Samui starts with rice. Here is what to buy on arrival, what to order off-menu, and what you can stop worrying about.
The two questions we get asked most in the shop come from people who have just landed. Can I stay in ketosis here? and is there anything vegan that isn't just fried rice without the egg? The answer to both is yes, but it takes about twenty minutes of planning on your first day instead of a week of frustration.
The first shop, on day one
Whatever your diet, the island runs on rice, sugar and palm oil by default. The fix is to stock the things that are hard to find near the beach and easy to keep in a room fridge.
If you are keto: keto bread and keto ice cream — both made fresh here and the two things people drive across the island for. Add almond or coconut flour if you are cooking, erythritol or monk fruit for sweetening, grass-fed ghee, MCT oil and electrolytes. That last one matters more in this heat than it does at home: the first week of ketosis plus 34°C is where most people give up, and it is almost always salt, not willpower.
If you are plant-based: oat and almond milk by the case, vegan cheese that actually melts, tempeh and tofu, Thai-made pea and soy protein, nutritional yeast, and vegan desserts. The protein is worth mentioning — imported brands on the island carry an import markup that Thai-made ones do not, and the Thai ones are frequently cleaner on the label.
Ordering off-menu at Thai restaurants
Most kitchens on Samui will happily adapt a dish if you ask in the right order. Two phrases do most of the work.
Mai sai nam tan — no sugar. Thai savoury cooking uses more palm sugar than visitors expect, and it is the single biggest hidden carb in an otherwise clean plate. Jay (เจ) is the Thai term for a strict Buddhist vegan diet: no meat, no dairy, no egg, and no onion or garlic. Saying "jay" gets you further than saying "vegan", because every kitchen knows it.
Beyond that: ask for stir-fries with no oyster sauce, swap rice for extra vegetables, and be aware that fish sauce is in almost everything unless you say otherwise. Green curry with no rice, tom yum without the sugar, and grilled fish with som tam are keto by accident and available everywhere.
What you can stop worrying about
Coconut products are excellent and cheap here — oil, milk, cream, aminos. Eggs are easy, and if you care where they came from, ours are from free-range farms ten minutes away. Fresh fish is straightforward. Herbs and greens are good and getting better as more Samui growers plant for the wellness market rather than for hotels.
What is genuinely hard: specialised low-carb baked goods, dairy-free cheese that behaves like cheese, and any supplement with a narrow brand requirement. Those are the things worth buying once rather than hunting for repeatedly.
If we do not have it
Send us a photo or a brand name on WhatsApp. If it exists in Thailand we will try to source it, and a good part of what is on our shelf today arrived because a customer asked for it first. That is not a marketing line — it is genuinely how the keto section started.
Anything you want us to hold?Message us and we will check the shelf and keep it at the counter under your name.
Ask on WhatsApp
Sourcing · 5 min read
Meet the farm behind our free-range eggs
Ten minutes from the shop, no cages, no hormones — and the reason the price does not move when everyone else's does.
Most eggs sold on Koh Samui arrive on the ferry. They are cheap, they are consistent, and nobody can tell you much about the birds that laid them. We started the free-range egg project because customers kept asking a question we could not answer honestly.
What free-range actually means here
The phrase is unregulated in a lot of markets, so it is worth being specific about what we mean. The farms we buy from keep hens outdoors with space and daylight rather than in tiered cages. They feed real feed rather than a growth-optimised formula. No growth hormones, and no routine antibiotics — meaning antibiotics are used to treat a sick bird, not mixed into feed as insurance.
We are not claiming an organic certification, because these farms do not have one and buying a certificate would not change how the birds live. What we can tell you is where the eggs came from and roughly when they were collected, which for most people is the thing that actually mattered.
The price we agreed, and why we hold it
The part of this project we are proudest of is the least visible. We agreed a price with the farmers that works at their end, and we hold it through the season rather than renegotiating whenever the mainland price dips.
That sounds simple and it is not. It means in cheap months we pay above market, and the margin on eggs is thinner than on almost anything else in the shop. It also means the farmers can plan, which is the whole point. A grower who knows what next quarter looks like will invest in better feed and more space. A grower squeezed every season will not.
Ten minutes, not ten days
The practical difference shows up in the pan. Eggs collected on Samui reach our shelf the same week. Ferry eggs are frequently two weeks old before they are unpacked. You can see it in how the white holds together and how the yolk sits — and you can taste it, though we would rather you judged that yourself than took our word for it.
The same rule for greens
We apply the same logic to leafy greens, herbs and fruit. Anything grown on Samui gets shelf space before an import does, even when the import is cheaper or looks more uniform. It also goes on the Lamphu Kitchen menu across the road, which is the honest test: if we would not cook with it ourselves, it does not belong on the shelf either.
If you keep a villa, a retreat kitchen or a café on the island and want to buy from the same growers, message us. Some weeks there is more than we can sell and a second buyer is the difference between a farmer expanding and a farmer giving up.
Anything you want us to hold?Message us and we will check the shelf and keep it at the counter under your name.
Ask on WhatsApp
Eco living · 4 min read
How the refill station works, and what it costs
Samui's first refill station has been running since 2019. Bring a bottle, pay by weight, and skip the packaging entirely.
The refill station started because of a bin. We were throwing out the same shampoo bottles, week after week, on an island where waste has nowhere good to go. In 2019 we put in taps and a scale, and it has been running since.
What is on tap
Two families of things. On the liquid side: shampoo, conditioner, body wash, hand soap, laundry liquid, dish soap and household cleaner, plus cooking and carrier oils. On the dry side: grains, rice, beans, nuts, seeds and dried fruit.
What is available shifts with what our suppliers can deliver in bulk, so it is worth messaging before a big refill run. The core lines — shampoo, conditioner, body wash, laundry — are there every week.
Three steps, about two minutes
Bring any clean container. An old bottle, a jar, a Tupperware. If you did not bring one, buy a reusable from us once and it is yours forever.
We weigh it empty. This is the part that matters: the empty weight is subtracted, so you pay for what goes inside and never for the packaging. A heavy glass jar costs you nothing extra.
Fill, weigh, done. Price is per gram, so you can take 80ml of something to try it, or five litres for a villa.
What it costs
Refill is consistently cheaper than the bottled equivalent of the same product, because you are not paying for a bottle, a label, a box, or the shipping weight of any of it. The gap is widest on the heavy things — laundry liquid, body wash, oils — and on anything you buy every month.
For a villa or a retreat, the saving compounds. We also run a collection programme: we pick up your bottles on a schedule, refill them, and bring them back, so there is no single-use packaging in the cycle at all. Several hotels use it for in-room dispensers instead of miniatures, which guests notice and staff prefer.
Bring your own bag too
We will not hand you a plastic bag by default. Bring your own, or take one of our reusables. It is a small thing, but on an island this size a lot of small choices made by a lot of people add up faster than they do anywhere else.
Not sure what is on tap this week? Send us a message before you drive over and we will check.
Anything you want us to hold?Message us and we will check the shelf and keep it at the counter under your name.
Ask on WhatsApp
