i. Biography
The cooking at PRU is built from a conventional professional sequence—school, apprenticeship, commission—and narrowed into a clear working brief: fine dining tied to farm-to-table practice in Phuket. In Jim Ophorst’s case, the line runs through Smink culinair, an internship at Gaggan, and the Phuket role that required proximity to ingredients, place, and the people responsible for what enters the kitchen.
The Climb
Formal training supplies the first discipline: repetition, order, timing, and the ability to work cleanly under pressure. At Smink culinair, Jim Ophorst received that base before widening his frame through an internship at Gaggan, where contemporary dining placed technique in a broader conversation about flavor and form. The Phuket commission moved the work from training into authorship. At PRU Restaurant, fine dining is not treated as separate from its surroundings; the restaurant’s farm-to-table concept depends on sourcing, selection, and the daily translation of local material into a dining-room format. Ophorst’s cooking there is described through rare ingredients, careful sourcing, and a kitchen practice concerned with shortening the distance between landscape and plate. The executive-chef role at PRU Restaurant at Trisara Resort has been held by Jim Ophorst since 2016. In that position, the craft problem is continuity: maintaining a restaurant identity tied to Phuket while keeping the sourcing and cooking legible to the guest.
Today
PRU Restaurant in Phuket, Thailand, works in fine dining with a farm-to-table concept, with Jim Ophorst serving as chef, partner, and co-founder. The operating principle is stated plainly: "We are committed to shortening the distance from farm to table in our kitchen and PRU’s dining room." That sentence describes a practical obligation rather than a slogan. A kitchen built around source-to-table distance has to account for selection, handling, explanation, and restraint. The work is not only to use ingredients, but to make clear why they are there and how they belong in the room. The labor required by that model is described by Ophorst without complaint or theater: "My job is my hobby, I go to work every day feeling like I get to do something I love so much that it’s not bad at all to work 14-15 hours, because it’s not work."
Signature
Signature dishes include Burned leek. The dish name points to a direct mode of cooking: one ingredient brought forward, with heat as the central intervention and restraint doing the structural work.
In Their Words “My job is my hobby, I go to work every day feeling like I get to do something I love so much that it’s not bad at all to work 14-15 hours, because it’s not work.”
Recognition
Pellegrino Young Chefs Award, semi-finalist (2016). Recognition for PRU includes One MICHELIN Star in 2019, with Jim Ophorst’s work there tied to the restaurant’s fine-dining farm-to-table concept.
Profile updated July 2026
FAQ
Asked of Jim
What is Jim Ophorst's current role?
Jim Ophorst is Chef/Partner/Co-Founder.
Where did Jim Ophorst train or study?
Jim Ophorst trained at Smink culinair.
What recognition has Jim Ophorst received?
One MICHELIN Star for PRU (2019).
