Big Fish Buffet Pattaya - A Hungry Journey into the Heart of the Thai Seafood Dream.

Vladimir
Jan 20
3 min read

Updated: Apr 20

The elevator doors opened onto what appeared to be an underwater hallway designed by Salvador Dali during a particularly ambitious acid trip. The Big Fish restaurant, adorned with eclectic artwork, stretched before us like some kind of aquatic fever dream, complete with live music pulsing through the space like a heartbeat beneath the waves.

The restaurant was full of what looked like huge sea creatures, all swooping and screeching and diving around the serving stations, which were going about a hundred miles an hour with attentive like sharks staff in their neatly pressed uniforms.

700 baht, about $21. In American money, that's barely enough to buy a decent bottle of Whiskey. But here in Pattaya, that same amount gets you into a wonderland of maritime excess that would make Poseidon himself weep with joy. The BBQ buffet runs Wednesday through Sunday, 6 PM to 9 PM – prime feeding hours for the seasoned professional.

The whole scene plays out like a fever dream in chrome and glass. Raw seafood displayed like jewels in a museum, waiting for your selection, begging to be transformed by fire and skill.

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The sushi bar stands as a testament to precision amid chaos. The salad bar? A green oasis in this carnivorous carnival.

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The salmon station was a sight that would make an Alaskan fisherman weep. Raw, gleaming, and sprawled across ice like some kind of pescatarian pin-up, with white-clad chefs wielding razor-sharp knives in a perpetual dance of slice and serve. This wasn't just food preparation – this was performance art with fish as the medium.

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My dining companion – was already three plates deep into the experience. "Order the fish," she said, her eyes glazed with the kind of madness that only comes from unlimited access to premium seafood. "They'll cook it any way you want. These people are professionals."

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She wasn't wrong. The local catches laid out before us were fresher than tomorrow's headlines. None of that frozen nonsense you get at the international chains. This was the real thing – the genuine article – the stuff that makes those fancy hotel buffets look like yesterday's cat food.

The side dishes came in waves – each one a new assault on the senses. The sushi bar stood like a fortress of raw fish excellence, defended by chefs who knew their business better than most people know their own mothers. And somewhere in the background, live music played, though by this point the food had become its own kind of music – a symphony of flavors that made more sense than anything I'd heard on the radio in years.

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We ate like kings. No, better than kings – we ate like hungry executives with expense accounts, except this feast cost less than a pair of decent sunglasses. The local luxury brand had outmaneuvered the international giants at their own game, creating something that felt both exclusive and accessible – a rare combination in any context.

The crustacean section... mother of God. A parade of prawns, an army of crabs, and creatures that would require a marine biology degree to properly identify. Some looked like they'd been recruited from the set of a Jules Verne movie. The prawns lay there, pink and pristine, like they'd been airbrushed by a perfectionist food photographer.

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But the real madness was at the meat station. A United Nations of protein: Australian beef standing proud next to New Zealand lamb, while chicken and pork waited in the wings. It was like Noah's Ark had crashed into a five-star kitchen. The meat cutters worked with the precision of surgeons and the confidence of butchers who knew they were handling the good stuff.

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And like a mad glutton i make way back to the sushi bar, it is another dimension entirely – a parallel universe where raw fish achieved enlightenment. Beside it, a spread of Italian cured meats and cheeses that would make a Sicilian grandmother nod in approval. The whole setup was beginning to feel like some kind of international food conspiracy.

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The whole scene was almost too much to process. Somewhere between the third helping of premium grade salmon and what I think was my fifth type of international cheese, I realized I'd crossed a line. There's no going back from this kind of buffet experience. Regular restaurants would forever seem like mere feeding stations in comparison.

When the fear subsides and the hunger takes over, you realize this is what dining was meant to be – no boundaries, no limits, just pure, unrestrained culinary hedonism six floors above the streets of Pattaya. Big Fish Buffet Pattaya