The Smokaccia Laboratory is where chef Luca Mascolo once of Amanpuri – stages a choice of a journey transforming Thai produce into a story you taste as much as you watch
By Andrew MacKenzie
Arrival
Phuket’s late light slipped along Surin’s high street as I pushed through the discreet doorway. Outside, scooters and surf; inside, a hush, perfumed with citrus and smoke. A counter gleamed under stage lights, alcoves glowed like theatre boxes. This wasn’t dinner. It was mise-en-scène.
Nothing here is quite as it seems. Expect trickery, transformation, and moments that will unseat what you think you know about food.
Champagne and Promises
The evening began in the lounge with a flute of champagne and a quiet reveal: jars of herbs, bowls of citrus, glass phials of oils. Ingredients, but displayed like props. Staff moved with discreet assurance, explaining little, hinting only that the show was about to begin. A waiter refreshed glasses in silence, checking details with the kind of precision that made you feel the choreography had been rehearsed as carefully as the cooking.
Counter Revelations
Then we were ushered to the counter where Chef Luca himself waited, calm and amused, conductor-like in his composure. The first act of our nine-course journey started with a smile.
The Inverse – Aperitive: a Campari bomb, almost liquid, almost solid, some trick of science holding it together just long enough to rest on my tongue before exploding in bitter, citrus fire. A prologue, a dare.
It was followed by Nothing Is What It Seems: the Flowing Smokaccia. Not bread but a drink, arriving under a plume of vapour that curled like stage fog. Was it liquid? Was it smoke? I sipped, unsure, and realised uncertainty was the point.
Origins and Mysteries
At the table, the story deepened. How It All Began presented the restaurant’s namesake bread: ten hours of tomato reduction, mortadella foam, balsamic and oils. Familiar flavours, refracted through time and technique until they spoke of both Thailand and Italy, memory and invention.
Next came An Unusual Event with Bertha – one chicken, two eggs, the puzzle of life staged on a plate. Witty and unexpected, it opened a conversation across the table: vegans and meat eaters teasing out their differences in real time, Luca’s dish sparking the debate he’d intended.
Alchemy in Practice
Chestnut & Truffle arrived with gravity: Occelli chestnut leaf cheese, truffle caviar, seasonal truffle. The aroma hit first, rising from the plate in a woodland wave, the richness grounded by faint bitterness.
Then Zero Waste & Alchemy: Parma ham, Nonthaburi burrata, basil, caramelised onion, salsa verde. Scraps turned opulent, the burrata astonishing in its depth, each bite proving that nothing here was throwaway.
Bell Pepper Memory was Luca’s childhood reframed – a reversed cold soup, sweet where you expected sharp, sharp where you expected sweet, unsurprising with the level of technique used. Sugar free, completely vegan, and unmistakably delicious. A dish that disarmed, leaving a cool nostalgic resonance that lingered in the air.
Waste Into Treasure
The next dish carried deliberate provocation: One Man’s Waste – Another One’s Treasure. Fish skin, smoked roe, basil freeze. It could have felt academic, but instead arrived crystalline, delicate, almost jewel-like. The shock wasn’t that it was delicious — it was how elegant waste could taste in the right hands.
Land or Sea
The main course offered a choice, two parallel stories: Science & Lobster: Phuket rock lobster with apple kombucha, wasabi leaf, Oscietra caviar. Bright, saline, edged with northern bite. Or Wagyu in the Andaman: A5 Oguma wagyu with oyster, mango, plankton, kale, seaweed caviar. The beef melted in my mouth — tender, rich, and edged by the brine of oyster and the sweetness of mango. The wagyu carried weight yet never sat heavy, its richness lifted by the sea. I chose it, and the tide met the fire with restraint that lingered long after the bite.
Desserts of Discipline
Again, a fork in the path. Impossible Pistachio: four textures, almost no sugar, no dairy. A study in green. Or Guilt-Free Dark Chocolate Pleasure: 75% Klong Loi cacao, bananas from the garden, Piedmont hazelnut, Phang Nga rum. Bitter, tropical,nut-deep, free of sugar yet carrying its own sweetness,
I lingered with the chocolate, dense yet somehow weightless, while tasting a spoon of my partner’s pistachio. Both carried a rare comfort — indulgent but light, leaving the table with a sense of ease rather than heaviness.
“ The scent of frangipani clung to the smoke on my jacket. Luca had shown how alchemy lies not in spectacle alone but in transformation – of ingredients, of memory, of expectation itself ”
The Perfect Ending
The coda unfolded back in the lounge. The atmosphere softened: lamps low, voices tempered, sta. resetting glasses and cutlery with the same poise they’d held all night. The pacing was seamless — one plate cleared, another placed, always timed to the conversation’s natural pauses.
A lemon meringue dissolved into air. Coconut snowbite shattered under nitrogen frost. Luca’s twenty-one-day limoncello carried Thai lemon, cardamom, anise. A modern cannolo folded Thai ricotta into Sicilian memory. Parma ham with Thai melon, vegan foie gras with pineapple glass, watermelon with fermented skin. Small, rapid sketches, each surprising, each fleeting.
Glass teapots steamed butterfly pea blossoms that bled indigo into violet at the touch of lime. Around me, tables leaned closer, murmuring with disbelief and amusement. The performance had eased into its afterglow.
VISIT
The Smokaccia Laboratory: 116, Cherng Thalay, 4 Surin, Tambon Choeng Thale, Amphoe Thalang, Phuket 83110.
Open: Thu–Mon, 6–9 pm. Closed Tue & Wed.
Book: +66 (0)93 179 4489.
The Smokaccia Laboratory has a choice of a 9 or 18 course menu.
