Issue IV is the largest one we have published. By the time it goes to press, the directory holds fifty-one restaurants, twenty-six best-of rankings, ten editor's annual awards, four walking tours, eight notes from the desk, a year-in-review chronicle, and the long-form features that have anchored every issue since we started in January. Whether the publication is improving in proportion to the quantity is the question we ask ourselves at the close of every issue. Issue V begins with that same question.
The signature feature of this issue is The Definitive 50 — a ranking of every restaurant in the directory, from one to fifty-one, with editorial citation for each. We considered breaking it into multiple shorter lists; we decided against. The whole point of an annual ranking is that it is the editors' single ordered judgment, all of it on one page, available to be argued with. Argue with it.
Three things the year has made clear
The first is that Pattaya's Korean dining scene is no longer an emerging segment — it is a structurally important part of the city's restaurant landscape, and the next eighteen months will likely produce the city's first truly upscale Korean tasting menu. We have tracked the Wongamat-Naklua corridor's expansion in the Notes column for two issues now; in Issue V we expect to be writing reviews of restaurants that did not exist in November of last year.
The second is that the cheap mass-market dining segment that defined Pattaya for visitors a decade ago — chain pizza, frozen-stock seafood buffets, identical-menu Beach Road tourist restaurants — is in structural retreat, faster than even we predicted in the Food Trends piece earlier this issue. Whatever replaces it is more interesting than what is leaving.
The third is that fine-dining concentration on Pratumnak Hill has reached a point where the cliff-edge restaurants now operate at booking-saturation through high season. Cafe des Amis, Mata Hari, Bruno's, the Royal Grill Room, and the new openings the editors are watching for late 2026 — together they form the most concentrated cluster of considered restaurants in any Thai city outside Bangkok proper.
"Whatever replaces the mass-market is more interesting than what is leaving."
Where we will be looking next
Three projects are already in motion for Issue V. We are expanding the directory to roughly seventy restaurants — the eighteen entries we currently mark as templated will be either fully reviewed or removed, depending on what verification depth allows. We are launching an Eaten This Week column that will publish a short five-restaurant editorial recommendation each Friday. And the Walking Tours department will gain at least three more routes, including one that has eluded us for two issues — a proper Bang Saray itinerary that does justice to the village south of the city.
We are also reconsidering how we cover the higher-end hotel restaurants. Our policy of treating them as restaurants on their own merits, rather than as conveniences for hotel guests, has held up well — but we do not yet have a clear editorial position on whether the rising prices are matched by rising quality. That is a question for Issue V or possibly Issue VI.
What we owe readers
The site has no advertising, no affiliate booking commissions, no paid placements. It is supported, at present, by the editors themselves and by the small but growing group of readers who have written in with corrections, recommendations, and the occasional polite disagreement. Without that feedback, the site is a guess. With it, the site is a publication.
If you have read this far: write in. If you have eaten somewhere we missed, write in. If we got something wrong, write in. The publication's editorial standards page describes what we will and will not review; the feedback page is the easiest path to telling us what we should be writing about next. Both are linked at the foot of every page.
Issue V publishes in late May. Until then.