282 Best Restaurants in Vietnam

The centerpiece of this stylish, immensely popular Japanese-owned restaurant is not a sushi bar but a brick oven, and the focus here is Japanese-Italian fusion, targeted at the Vietnamese palate but equally loved by out-of-towners. You can opt for classic creations such as prosciutto margarita or something a little more experimental, like flower pizza (with edible blooms such as pumpkin, leek, and daylily), teriyaki chicken with seaweed or salmon miso cream. Italian-style appetizers and pasta dishes are also available, as is a cheese platter featuring handmade cheeses from the 4Ps' cheese factory near Dalat. Customers who can't get a seat will stand by the bar just for a slice of the mouthwatering pizza. Reservations for this location should be made in advance. This location is the original, with a growing number of restaurants in some of Vietnam's biggest cities.

This hip café would compete with the best in Ho Chi Minh City for both their passion for coffee and quality of arabica beans, which they roast in house—they even have a menu of beans from around the world. Though they do still offer Vietnamese phin filter robusta, this is the place to get your European-style coffee fix.

The city's only Michelin-starred restaurant, Anan Saigon puts a whimsically modern twist on Vietnamese street food. Talented Vietnamese-American chef-owner Peter Cuong Franklin is credited for pioneering Vietnamese fusion cuisine, often elevating Vietnamese flavors with French cooking techniques. The main restaurant is on the ground floor but also explore the upper floors to Nhau Nhau for cocktails with an Old Saigon vibe, Pot Au Pho noodle bar serving innovative variations of Vietnam's de facto national dish, and the rooftop bar for views of the neighboring wet market backed by one of Saigon's tallest buildings.

Set in traditional Ede houses, long timber buildings on stilts, this restaurant is designed to give tourists an atmospheric introduction to Ede and other Central Highland minority cuisines. Though touristy, it's an uncommon opportunity to try food outside of Vietnam's dominant culture, and the dining experience is done tastefully, with pretty dishware, relaxing music, and a fire pit at night. The dishes are meant for family-style sharing.

Bancong means "balcony" in Vietnamese (from the French balcon), and this multistory 1940s Art Deco mansion has plenty of them. The outdoor spaces overflow with flowers and pot plants, and make good spots to watch scenes of the Old Quarter unfold below. The menu is rather muddled, but the Vietnamese dishes, including bun cha, are reliably good. So is the ca phe cot dua (iced coconut coffee), a Hanoi specialty.

This simple eatery compensates for its lack of sophistication with hearty portions of delicate banh cuon, steamed rice rolls stuffed with meat or seafood. Watch the resident cooks painstakingly roll out their sheets of rice noodle and spoon on the filling and feel your mouth start to water. There are three options: chicken, pork, or shrimp. Come with an appetite as all three are worth trying.

Always packed with locals, this narrow eatery serves up Ho Chi Minh City's best banh cuon (steamed rice flour crepes stuffed with minced pork and wood ear mushrooms) and an excellent version of the central Vietnamese banh beo (steamed rice flour pancakes topped with dried prawn). Just order the first three items on the menu and you'll be in foodie heaven in no time.

When famed foodie Anthony Bourdain visited, he declared the banh mi served here to be quite possibly the best in Vietnam; and he might just have been right. What you get here is a symphony in a sandwich, and though both her menu and popularity have grown, Madam Phuong is still serving up the same secret family recipes and silence-inducing sandwiches. Bourdain's favorite banh mi deluxe is a pork feast consisting of a mouth-melting slow-roasted five-spiced fillet, a rich peppery pate, a handful of herbs, pickled vegetables, and finished off with a generous scoop of mayonnaise, smoked chili sauce, and messy fried egg. Phuong also has vegetarian alternatives; ask for banh mi chay.

Banh xeo is a great example of how regional Vietnamese food is. These fried savory rice pancakes are a staple in Vietnam, but Binh Dinh Province's version are small, thin, crisp, and topped with fresh shrimp (beef, egg, or squid are also available). To eat, cut it up and wrap it in rice paper with herbs, lettuce, and green mango, then dunk it in some chili-lime-fish sauce and tuck in. It's mesmerizing to watch one woman manage a dozen pans over flames.

More of a café than a bar, this tiny place serves great, healthy breakfasts as well as Western sandwiches, salads, and pizzas, all by the beach. Bar200 makes their own pizza dough, sandwich bread, and burger buns in house. There's covered seating as well as outdoor tables on the deck.

The old-world charm of the Victoria Chau Doc Hotel extends to its in-house restaurant, which serves Vietnamese and Western cuisine overlooking a busy junction of the Chau Doc and Hau River. Take a seat on the terrace to enjoy sunset (and happy hour) at the river and the attentive but discreet service. This is the priciest place in town, but the food, the staff, and the river views make it worthwhile. Reservations are recommended because sometimes the restaurant hosts bus tours.

Awarded a Bib Gourmand in 2023, this cute little eatery can be found down a small alleyway near Ben Thanh Market, past a row of nail salons. Known for serving cheap and cheerful Vietnamese food at its finest, the restaurant's staff are friendly, the food is tasty, and there's a range of interesting and refreshing drinks and desserts.

What began as a modest seafood restaurant is now a bustling three-story eating emporium that's jam-packed on weekends with tourists from Ho Chi Minh City who come to Mui Ne to feast on fresh seafood. To order, head out front to the buckets of prawn, fish, clams, and other sea critters and make your selection (price is by weight), then choose how you want it cooked (steamed, grilled, stir-fry, hotpot). There is also an à la carte English menu.

A quirky, fun little coffee shop serving coffee as well as tea, smoothies, and beer, Bicycle Up is a great place to hang out and recharge with a book or gawk at all the wondrous retro treasures.

This delightful and delicious fast-casual Italian shop has ready-to-go focaccia pizza slices and panini, as well as heartier hot dishes that come out quick. This is a great place for aperitivo, where you can sip an Aperol spritz or a Peroni while nibbling arancini rice balls.

This venue is spotlessly clean, and despite its popularity with tourists and the airbrushed makeover, it is still very much the real deal. Like all the best restaurants purveying local favorites, this place specializes in one dish only: bun bo nam bo (a southern-style beef and noodle salad). Translated as "southern style rice noodles with beef," this mixture of vermicelli noodles, beef, lettuce, cucumber, shallots, bean sprouts, cilantro, and chopped peanuts is more commonly found in Ho Chi Minh City. Be sure to mix the concoction thoroughly with your chopsticks to experience the broth-drenched greens at the base of the bowl.

Bun Cha Huong Lien has wholeheartedly embraced the alias Bun Cha Obama since 2016, when the erstwhile president visited Hanoi and dined here with the late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain. The bun cha (grilled pork and rice vermicelli noodles) and nem hai san (seafood spring rolls) are decent, but it's worth visiting just for the photography documenting the occasion. It's plastered all over the eatery.

Even if you're not staying at Azerai Can Tho, a boutique resort on a lush islet in the middle of the river, it's worth making a reservation and taking their boat over for an elegant lunch or dinner. The casual lunch menu and more extensive dinner menu both feature delicious Vietnamese specialties and fine international dishes, paired with a comprehensive wine list and a slew of creative cocktails. The menu changes weekly at The Grill, their other restaurant, opened on weekends.

The outdoor area of this French-influenced venue is an ideal place for some very romantic dining and expat gatherings. The interior is equally convivial with stripped pine tables and wooden furniture. The food is a mixed bag of European dishes prepared and served with flare.

A stylish lounge and restaurant on the banks of the slow-flowing Saigon River, The Deck is a place to spoil yourself with sublime seafood-focused pan-Asian cuisine, fine wines, and professional service. The beauty of the entry courtyard, with its tall trees, black marble pond, and potted lotus plants, is almost forgotten once you enter the restaurant, where the river views take center stage. The weekend Champagne brunches are sophisticated yet casual and the executive set lunches are perfectly suited to the business crowd.

Serving French fare with a Vietnamese touch, Fashionista Café is the place to see and be seen, enclosed in a lovely glass "winter garden" in the heart of the city. Owned by a fashion magnate, the space is intimate and stylish with a retail space (mainly women's fashion) upstairs. The set menus are especially good value considering the high quality and beautiful presentation of the food. Check the Facebook page for events, including acoustic nights, wine and dine, and Sunday picnic brunches. The afternoon tea is superbly priced and very popular with the Instagram crowd.

This sprawling seafront eatery is regarded as the best seafood place in town. Like many Vietnamese places, the interior design takes a back seat to the food and the view. It's pricier than the more local joints farther along Tran Phu Street, but you get what you pay for, which in this case, aside from the great food, is English-speaking staff, an English menu, and servers used to dealing with international tourists.

Serving creamy cappuccinos and delicious lattes in calm and quiet surroundings, Habakuk might be the best spot in the city for withdrawing from Hanoi's chaos with a book. Though best known for its excellent coffee, Habakuk morphs into a bistro serving delicious lasagna in the evenings.

There’s nothing fancy about this charity-run diner, just good Western food at cheap prices and heartwarming service. Repurposed from an English center, this café employs minority and deaf workers, and is a favorite among expats and visitors. Most come for the cause, but return for the vegetarian chili, English breakfast, or burgers and pizzas.

A devilishly themed cocktail bar hidden deep down a local alley, The Heo Bistro not only expertly crafts classic and signature cocktails, but their kitchen also serves delicious bistro snacks, salads, and pastas.

More of a restaurant than a bar but still good for evening drinks, this stylish spot specializes in Vietnamese rice wine, which is sometimes used in traditional medicines. Bring your game face and try the insect dishes and creative rice wine cocktails. The liquor, sold under the restaurant's own Son Tinh brand, is quite strong, so avoid drinking it on an empty stomach. 

The name translates to "poppy flower," and this chic little eatery is in a corner of the former La Manufacture d'Opium, the French-controlled opium refinery and warehouse. It offers contemporary Vietnamese cuisine with knockout flavors and a wine list that works with the local cuisine. The Art Deco interior is elegant, with wrought-iron chairs, cast-iron lamps, hand stenciling, and a leafy outdoor terrace. Standout dishes include mustard-leaf rolls; pink pomelo, squid, and crab salad; and soft shell crabs in green rice batter with passion fruit sauce. Hoa Tuc is popular with tour groups, so reservations are recommended, especially for lunch.

If you're craving quality sushi at reasonable prices, this family-owned eatery can't be beat. Grab a seat at the sushi bar on the ground floor and watch Vietnamese-American Chef Van at work or take one of the tables upstairs in a stylish space and order to your heart's content. The restaurant offers three tiers of omakase sushi buffet where diners have two hours to eat their fill of sushi, sashimi, salads, and hot dishes. Upgrade to the higher tiers for progressively premium ingredients including wagyu and otoro.

Now back at the Temple of Literature (it moved during the pandemic), this place can get packed with tour groups. The flavors here—from baked fish in banana leaf to bamboo beef—are bold and brilliant, and the menu is a mix of creative dishes. The fact that Koto (an acronym for "know one, teach one") is a charity restaurant that benefits street youth, is just the icing on the lemon cheesecake.

The flagship location of this well-loved café chain offers a chic Old Saigon vibe to go along with reliably good, contemporary café fusion fare including salads, sandwiches, pastas, and other Western and Asian favorites. The all-day breakfast menu is also popular as are the gorgeous desserts. Head upstairs for a trendy retail space featuring Vietnam-inspired clothing and gifts from local designers and more seating.