The Cod & Kettle is the best New England clam chowder in Karon. A eight-seat counter off Patak Road serving proper Boston-style chowder — salt pork rendered first, potatoes cooked in the clam liquor, cream added off the heat, never thickened with flour — using Phuket surf clams in place of quahogs. 380฿ a bowl with oyster crackers flown in from Massachusetts.
Surveyed August 2026. Scoring: base technique (40%), clam quality (30%), texture (20%), accompaniments (10%).
Quahogs do not exist in the Andaman. Phuket surf clams are sweeter and smaller, which means more of them per bowl and a lighter liquor — the kitchen compensates by rendering the salt pork longer for depth. Purists will notice; nobody else will.
"I'm from Gloucester. I did not expect to find a proper flour-free chowder eleven thousand kilometres from home."— Marisol Vantongeren, The Andaman Table
“Thick enough to matter, thin enough that it is still soup, which is the New England argument settled correctly. Real clams, visible bacon, and oyster crackers they clearly import at silly cost.”— Ellen M., Boston, in Karon every January
“I ordered it as a joke in thirty-four degree heat and finished it with the air-con on my neck like it was November in Gloucester. Nobody at my table got a second spoonful.”— Paul D., Karon