The High Life

Step into the intimate gourmet world of Tree Tops Sky Dining & Bar for amazing experiences.

Tree Tops Sky Dining & Bar excels at lulling its guests into the sublime. When you arrive, gracious waiting staff lead you to a charming thatched pavilion in the heart of a glade of trees and rocks. The restaurant consists of eight such dining pavilions, allowing you a very high degree of privacy. Indeed the setting is so spread out that it’s impossible to see more than a fraction of the restaurant from any angle – total intimacy, in other words. Suffice to say there’s nowhere else remotely like this on Samui, and you’d need to venture much further afield to find somewhere similar. Tree Tops is found at Anantara Lawana Koh Samui Resort in the very north of Chaweng – far away from all the crowds. 

Tree Tops, despite its deceptively simple name, is renowned as one of the best restaurants on Samui. This is one of only a handful of places to go if you’re looking for the kind of happy experience you’ll be able to look back on in years to come and remember in detail. 

The outstanding culinary team here is headed by gifted Chef de Cuisine, Jakov Oršulic - a young, innovative talent who arrived at Tree Tops after working in six other countries, with travel sharpening his skills and adding regional inspiration to his European-inspired cuisine. He’s the kind of person who wakes up thinking about what’s on the menu and how to offer his guests exceptional dishes. And to that end, he doesn’t ever want to sit back and declare his work done. That’s why you’ll frequently find changes on the menu. Not the whole thing, but here and there, and what seems fixed one month may be different the next. Repeat guests are always wowed, and complacency is definitely not the order of the day. 

An excellent à la carte menu awaits at Tree Tops, but pride of place really goes to the duo of tasting menus that are filled with treats, along with a third, which is purely vegetarian. Each one is a delight, filled with exciting finds. The multiple courses in each menu are all equally good, so it’s hard to single out individual dishes. Jakov’s brilliance shines in offerings such as the restaurant’s signature dish of Snow Fish, Green Curry and Carrot Ginger. The curry is a deep and vibrant green with chlorophyll providing the colour, extracted using inordinate care from humble spinach. With extraordinarily delicate textures, this dish is bound to please, even if you eat top quality fish on a near-daily basis. 

The Wagyu of Lamb Belly with Massaman Curry and served with polenta is also outstanding. Here the top-notch lamb (Wagyu in this context simply means the very best) is slow-cooked for 24 hours before the fat is trimmed. Meanwhile, the massaman curry is reduced over seven hours before it’s ready. This is a dish where you can inhale the scent of lamb before savouring its exquisiteness. Jakov doesn’t believe in over-complicated food and his stand-out Oysters, Bacon & Potato proves the point. Served in a simple stone bowl, fine-de-claire oysters take on new appeal when teamed up with crispy bacon, sun-dried tomatoes and shallots. The ensemble is lovingly blanketed by aerated mashed potato, which is a gossamer-light transformation of the popular staple. 

Desserts are crafted to please but start with a kind of pre-dessert featuring goat’s cheese before moving onto some seriously decadent choices. Tree Tops has a particularly wide offering of wines. The selection has caught the attention of some of the fiercest critics around; since 2012, Wine Spectator Restaurant Awards have listed the resort annually for its excellent selection. All dishes can, if wished, be paired. 

December is of course a festive time and Tree Tops will be offering special seasonal menus on the evenings of the 24th, 25th and 31st December, as well as Christmas lunch on the 25th December. Meanwhile, for the best of exclusive small-scale dining, book in advance for an impressive evening at Tree Tops.

Karan Ladd