18 Best Restaurants in Mekong Delta, Vietnam

This is a great find in Ca Mau, with nostalgic style (the name translates as "ancient street"), including quaint little wooden pavilions, a courtyard bonsai garden, and fish ponds. Serving Chinese-influenced dishes as well as Vietnamese cuisine, Pho Xua has a menu that contains English subtitles, although not much English is spoken by the staff. With its proximity to the ocean, it's no wonder that seafood is the house specialty, but there's also a range of chicken, beef, buffalo, and pork dishes.

An assortment of antiques and a jungle of potted-plants add panache to this humble family-run restaurant, which has been in business for a decade. It's no wonder, because the home-style Vietnamese dishes of meat, seafood, or vegetable stir-fry served with rice are delicious and filling.

Across the road from the marina, this small, neat, and cozy café is a good place to stop for a coffee, ice cream, milk shake, or smoothie, as well as light meals such as sandwiches, burgers, and Vietnamese dishes.

The food at this cheap local joint is tasty, and though the interior is basic, the restaurant is air-conditioned and the menu is in Vietnamese, English, and Chinese, so ordering is relatively simple. Mekong Delta specialties include lau (hotpot), ca kho (caramelized fish), and suon xao chua ngot (sweet-and-sour pork riblets) as well as bo luc lac (shaking beef—because it dances around the pan while being cooked) and chao tom chien (prawn paste on sugar cane sticks).

Popular with locals, this restaurant is designed to look like a bamboo village hut, and is a bit of a point-and-order eating adventure for visitors—the menu has no English, only a few photos on each page that vaguely correspond to the dishes listed below. The menu offers seafood, salad, beef, chicken, sparrow (chim se), and hotpot. Luckily the prices are so low it doesn't really matter if you mis-order a few dishes.

Located in a modern development, this corner French café-bistro is just the ticket for those wanting a break from Vietnamese food. It has egg dishes and tartine for breakfast, French salads, duck, and steak for dinner, and in a strange twist, poke bowls for lunch.

This garden restaurant is popular with locals for feasting with family and friends. The specialty is whole chicken (including the head and feet), but the menu has a range of chicken, beef, pork, crab, fish, and snail dishes.

In contrast to the same-owned L'Escale French restaurant on the rooftop, this all-day café-restaurant serves a variety of traditional Mekong specialties in a casual bistro setting. The dishes highlight typical Mekong Delta flavors, ingredients, and preparations, including sweet-and-sour soups and braised-in-claypot dishes; the adventurous can try the snake set, while the less adventurous still have a Western menu available. Part of the tourist-targeted empire that also owns Sao Hom and The Lighthouse Restaurants, this one offers the most traditional fare. Reservations are recommended at peak times, as large tour groups can arrive en masse.

Choose fresh seafood, ribs, chicken, and vegetables from trays out front to be barbecued on sidewalk grills made from 44-gallon drums. The no-frills setting, corrugated metal roof, and chaotic service are part of the fun.

Funky wall art, exposed brick, and black metal gives character to this tucked-away vegetarian cafe where you can find healthy fare such as salads, sourdough toasts, and smoothie bowls.

Though overwhelmingly touristy, the night market's animated vendors and buckets of fresh seafood, which are cooked to order, provide some eye-catching visuals and seafood dinners here can be a memorable experience, especially for a group. There are also plenty of tantalizing snacks, from roasted peanuts and grilled meat skewers to tropical fruit.

A basic riverfront restaurant firmly targeted at the tourist trade, Phuong Nam does a range of fast, budget-friendly Vietnamese dishes. The interior is basic, with check tablecloths and chunky wooden furniture, and the fan-cooled restaurant is open to the street. The menu has vegetarian, seafood, pork, chicken, and snake dishes.

Alongside a French-colonial villa once home to a Nguyen Dynasty official, Mekong serves up fresh and tasty Vietnamese dishes, has an English menu, and serves cheap cold beers. The location could be described as a courtyard if it didn't look so much like a parking lot, and the metal tables and plastic chairs are basic, but the tablecloths do give the place a certain touch of sophistication. The menu includes southern Vietnamese staples such as seafood, eel, quail, and frog, and there are plenty of less exotic options as well.

Locals will tell you that this long-standing shop has the best pho (beef noodle soup) in town, though it has become a bit pricey by Vietnamese standards. Unusually, they are open for both breakfast and dinner.

The menu is as thick as a book, but this modest family-owned restaurant has become extremely popular with tourists for their expertly prepared fresh seafood—especially the fish and prawns—and for their charcoal grill, which fires up every evening.

A Long Xuyen institution, Thang Loi is a large outdoor restaurant known for its seafood, although the spring rolls and beef dishes are pretty good, too. There is an English menu (and cheap beer) to make things easier.

A basic eatery that attracts a good mix of tourists and locals, Truong Van serves standard but tasty noodle soup, spring rolls, fish soup, and grilled beef in a sweet-and-sour sauce. Vegetarians can tuck into mixed sautéed vegetables (cauliflower, baby corn, red and green peppers, morning glory) over wok-fried noodles. Toast to your trip with Saigon beer and finish on a sweet note with the excellent banana pancakes.

Pull up a stool at this sidewalk restaurant and pop open a Saigon beer while you look to see what the locals are eating. Chau Doc is all about seafood, and you can't go wrong with clay pot fish—unless you don't like fish sauce, in which case go for clay pot pork, with juices that taste great over white rice. There's not a lot for vegetarians, but the plates of sautéed vegetables—morning glory, baby corn, banana flowers—flavored with coriander go well with rice, and there is a vegetable soup.