282 Best Restaurants in Vietnam

A popular rainy-day hangout for expats and families, this homey Western bakery, restaurant, and delicatessen midway between Cua Dai beach and the Old Town offers a large adventure playground and a menu packed with huge portions of home favorites, including delicious Aussie meat pie, home-baked cakes, and a great kids' menu.

There's a great atmosphere as well as great food at District Federal, helmed by a Mexican chef cooking authentic Mexican cuisine with fresh, high-quality local ingredients. Don't miss the fabulous drinks, including tepache juice, horchata, and frozen margaritas. You can stop by for drinks only, but the food really should not be missed.

For authentic Vietnamese specialties it is hard to go wrong with this friendly venue, which serves up a huge range of classics as well as Ninh Binh favorites like grilled deer and goat meat. The lighting isn't exactly mellow, but effusive service and delicious food are ample compensation for the utilitarian surroundings.

At Duyen Anh Restaurant you can pick up your own live fish, shrimp, or lobsters from the tanks, and vegetables are homegrown in the 4-acre garden viewable from your dining table. All dishes are designed to share. Crab salad is a delicate combination of crabmeat, crab roe, and baked rice paper with fresh banana blossom, bean sprouts, and herbs. The best seats are on the second floor or in the private pavilions on a waterlily pond. Although it has a beautiful setting and a playground for kids, it's far from the city's center.

A Mui Ne favorite, El Latino serves up homemade Mexican and Tex-Mex with a very chill vibe. Warm and cozy with exposed brick, fun painted murals, and loads of color, the kitchen nevertheless takes its food seriously, making fresh tortillas, breads, and brownies to accompany the mainly slow-cooked meats that will melt in your mouth. Check their Facebook for events, such as live music on Friday or Saturday night.

This friendly little bistro, a fixture in the city's dining scene since 2009, wouldn't be out of place in New York. The Elbow Room serves hearty all-day breakfast, burgers, sandwiches, pizzas, and pastas.

A beautiful, restful garden café filled with tribal wood carvings, antique gongs, and art installations, this is the place to come for excellent coffee, sweet egg coffee (a Hanoi specialty of whipped egg yolk and coffee), and fruit shakes. The English-speaking owner, Mr. An, is a fountain of knowledge about the local area and can organize multiday treks or tours through nearby ethnic minority villages.

This riverside café features a sizeable koi pond at its center and an extensive drink menu, from espresso and milk tea, to cold brew, in addition to a small menu of snacks and desserts.

Another standout in Danang is the innovative fusion cuisine at Fat Fish—a marriage of culinary sensibilities engendered by local restaurateur Duc Tran, whose empire of venues in Hoi An has made him one of Vietnam's most recognizable figures. In a smart venue with seats overlooking the Han River, diners can sample signature dishes like five-spice, pan-fried duck breast with soba noodles, and seabass with ginger jam with glasses of Pasteur Street Jasmine IPA, a tasty Vietnamese brew. 

This restaurant is squarely aimed at tourists who want to try a range of Vietnamese cuisine, including dishes that traditionally are street food, in a clean, relatively upmarket atmosphere. It's a safe option for those who are wary of real street food, or for families or groups who all want something different.

This long-standing Indian restaurant serves delicious North Indian and tandoori dishes, with large naan bread. Located in the heart of Mui Ne's tourist strip, Ganesh offers a break from Vietnamese cuisine.

Ganesh is a well known stamp of quality for lovers of Indian cuisine in Vietnam. The chain has branches throughout the nation, and is now imparting its brand of spicy alchemy on Quang Binh courtesy of its Phong Nha outlet. Expect a delicious array of North and South Indian curries, piping hot naan and roti fresh from the tandoor, and friendly, gracious service. 

This cheap-and-cheerful restaurant has gone viral for their coconut chicken curry, which also comes in a vegetarian or shrimp version, but there's an array of other dishes, all slightly Westernized versions of Vietnamese fare. The food is reliably delicious and reasonably priced.

This traditional Italian restaurant is a popular spot in the Old Town center for those looking for a break from the standard Vietnamese fare. During the day, the welcoming, homely environs make for a quiet rest stop, where you can enjoy a good Italian coffee or a light bite from the second-floor balcony overlooking the streets.

The restaurant, part of Green Bamboo Lodge Resort, is one of the few places in the village with a deck on the river's edge, so you can enjoy tranquil river views with cold beer and tasty Vietnamese dishes from their extensive menu that includes many vegetarian options.

This restaurant has plenty of gluten-free options, specializes in cooking classes, and is popular with travelers. They operate two farms near Hanoi and grow most of their own food. They have a special vegetarian menu, and the setting is cozy, with exposed brick and bamboo furnishings. It's a nice place to sit down and enjoy a break from the frenetic pace outside.

There's a range of morning and daytime street food stalls surrounding Ha Tien's impressive market, which comprises of several buildings. Also find lots of cheap snacks and seafood at the night market, which used to be on the riverside but has been relocated to a wide boulevard in a newly developed area of town; a few vendors still set up at the river.

Son La, deep in the Northwest highlands, isn't really known for internationally friendly cuisine, and this huge beer hall is the closest offering to those whose palates prefer familiar comforts. As its name states, the restaurant specializes in hotpots and barbecue. While there are entries taken right out of the tribe people's regular diet in its menu, it also offers dishes such as prime rib, flame-roasted beefsteak, and calamari. The $3, 0.8 gallon beer towers are also guaranteed to be a crowd-pleaser. 

It might be overcrowded during lunch and dinner, but this open restaurant's wide range of Hue specialties such as nem lui (grilled pork sausage on lemongrass stick), banh khoai (savory pancake), tapas like beo, nam, loc, and noodles with grilled pork and salad are all worth the wait.

The main draw here is the convivial, bohemian atmosphere. Housed in a stunning 1920s French-colonial villa in a quiet part of the Old Quarter, the café is rustic and warm, with original tiles, wooden furnishings, and high ceilings. The menu has undergone quite an improvement in recent years, with fabulous breakfast and brunch options. An adequate list of wine and beers and regular music and art events make the café a decent bet in the evenings, too.

A central location on Long Beach's main strip, an eclectic assortment of recycled furniture and antiques, friendly owners, and terrific Arabica coffee beans from Dalat are more than enough reasons to choose this creatively decorated nook. Look for their mobile cart on the beach behind the café, where they do sunset pop-ups.

This wine bar and delicatessen pays homage to the French colonial era, which left an indelible mark on Vietnamese cuisine. Indeed, the cheese and charcuterie at the lively venue would earn the approval of even the most discerning Gallic customer. Beyond delectable food and drinks (one of Hoi An’s best value drinks happy hours can be enjoyed here), guests can immerse themselves in various events and exhibitions by local and visiting artists and photographers.

This bright, modern, clean restaurant serves flavorful Asian plant-based dishes, from noodle soups and tasty stir-fry, to rice dishes with soy-based "meat" and vegetable tempura. They have menus in English to boot.

True, there's not much in the way of competition, but this is the best dining venue in Bac Ha. The menu will be familiar to students of the region's culinary landscape, with a solid selection of Vietnamese staple noodle and rice dishes along with lots of grilled, fried, and boiled meat.

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).

Usually packed with locals, this big eating hall with metal tables and plastic stools is the best place in town to order hu tieu My Tho, the noodle soup specialty of My Tho. The menu, printed on the walls, is simple: hu tieu (rice-noodle soup), banh canh (rice-and-tapioca noodle soup), bot nui (rice-macaroni soup), and hoanh thanh (pork wonton soup). There are different prices for hu tieu: thit (pork), xuong (pork knuckle), muc tuoi (fresh squid) and tom tuoi (fresh shrimp).

Just a few doors from the War Remnants Museum, this vegetarian restaurant is a calm oasis that starts to restore flagging spirits from the first step past the pond and lush greenery into the stylish interior with Indochine vibes. The fresh and healthy pan-Asian menu celebrates rather than disguises fruits and vegetables with emphasis on beautiful presentation. Try the square spring rolls, the visually appealing rainbow salad with sesame dressing, and the wild vegetable soup.

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.

Simple and delicious dishes are served shortly after you sit down on a plastic chair in this restaurant in the fabled neighborhood of Kim Long. Their menu is limited to only a few barbecue pork dishes. The recipes that were passed down to Mrs. Hai, the owner, from her grandmother have not changed since the 1960s. Huyen Anh has been so popular that its neighboring restaurants even fake their name and menu. There are only three authentic Huyen Anh, which are this one, Huyen Anh at 50 Kim Long Street, and Huyen Anh 2 at 126 Kim Long Street. The last two are owned and run by Hai’s brothers.