25 Best Restaurants in The Central Coast, Vietnam

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.

Fusing art, music, history, and cuisine, this 19th-century house in Hoi An's Old Quarter has been beautifully restored and offers silver service at remarkable prices. Slightly overshadowed by the setting, the menu is Vietnamese-meets-modern cuisine with such dishes as bean sprout dumplings, mango and lotus salad, caramelized pork, and wok-fried noodles.

Well established as one of the town’s preeminent dining venues is Morning Glory, where menu highlights include roast duck leg served with a five-spice dressing and crunchy tofu coated in young sticky rice. This is where local food celebrity Miss Vy originally made her name, and standards have barely slipped over the years with tourists and visiting gourmands flocking to the venue for authentic local dishes prepared with passion and skill.

At the midway point of one of the most incredible (and strenuous) 22-km (13½-mile) bicycle loops in the Bong Lai Valley, with views over rice fields and the river, the Pub With Cold Beer has hammocks, a pool table, and, in season, tubes for floating down the river. It’s a beautiful spot to unwind and regain energy for a few hours, which is how long your chicken lunch is going to take to prepare once you've chosen your live bird.

No visit to Dong Ha is complete without a visit to this cheerful spot in the heart of town. It's both a charity café (Mr Tam employs and supports deaf people in the area) and a one-stop information shop, without the hard sell. The menu is a wholesome mix of excellent Vietnamese and Western staples, including pizza, banh mi, and half-decent espresso. Tam also employs local war veterans and offers excellent tours of the DMZ and surrounding area.

If you are staying overnight in Dong Ha, Tam's also offers decent accommodations at very cheap prices (starting at 160,000d) as well as guided tours to the DMZ.

As the first fully interactive street food experience in Vietnam, this buzzy, upscale food hall, owned by local-celebrity chef Ms. Vy, attracts a steady stream of enthusiastic foodies keen to take a culinary tour of Hoi An’s gastronomic classics. The menu here is visual, and diners are invited to wander among the various food stations where traditional dishes like cau lao noodles, banh mi, and savory country pancakes are made to order, to be devoured on simple bench seating arranged in the central courtyard.

Local families who come in droves to this popular no-frills diner make out-of-town visitors feel warmly welcome, even if you don't master the art of rolling the perfect banh xeo. There’s no menu; just pull up a stool and within minutes you’ll be presented with pork skewers, crispy pancakes stuffed with bean sprouts, deep-fried shrimp spring rolls, rice paper, various greens, a satay-style dip, and an array of condiments. Go hungry; portions are large.

Hai, from Hai’s Eco Conservation Tour, runs this bamboo restaurant with his family and serves delicious dishes every day from 7 am until 10:30 pm. Try the fresh fruit smoothies. You can also take part in a morning cooking class that includes a visit to the local market.

Don't be put off by the grungy interior of this restaurant. The quality of the decor is in inverse proportion to the quality of the food. This favorite among locals serves only six dishes, all specialties of the region. The price of 40,000d per dish should allow you to try them all—if you're hungry enough.

One of Central Vietnam's culinary gifts to the world is its banh xeo (savory crepe). Made from a basic blend of rice flour, turmeric, and coconut milk and stuffed with other ingredients such as shrimp, pork, mung beans, and diced green onions, these delicious treats are best torn off and wrapped in a lettuce leaf and dunked in a nuoc cham dipping sauce made with fish sauce and chili. One of the best places in Danang to sample the delicacy is at alleyway eatery Ba Duong.

This inspired little beach club 15 km (10 miles) from Hue has shady beach cabanas, hammocks, and a large cobalt-blue fishing boat that serves as the bar. It's a laid-back place, with a simple Vietnamese seafood menu, where you feel a world away from the annoyances of the city. They make it easy to stay with a few huts housing dorm-style accommodations. Its sister accommodation Villa Louise with tastefully designed ocean view villas and a swimming pool is a gem in the crown of this stretch of pristine beach. The Beach Bar is on private land, and you pay 100,000d on weekdays and 150,000d during weekends and on holidays to enter (which is refundable against food and drink orders).

The sign outside says "The best spitroast pork and noodle shop in the world (probably)," and if the pork belly they serve is anything to go by, the claim is justified. This local joint with plastic chairs and an enormous grill out front is easy to find if you follow your nose from the small boat station in town.

From your table in this tiny family restaurant hidden in an alley of a backpackers’ area, you can smell the mouth-watering fragrance from the open kitchen where Mr. Hung is preparing your fresh meal. His amiable wife Hue, and sister Ha (who is a French tour guide) serve delicious plates with a warm smile, adding a homely touch to the experience. All meals are finished with abundant complimentary seasonal fresh fruits. Their beautiful cooking and exceptional service compensates for their tasteless interior and narrow space.

Com ga (chicken with aromatic rice) is a true specialty of Hoi An, and one of the best places to try the dish is down an alley off Phan Chu Trinh. They start you off with some crispy shredded papaya and thin slices of onion and lime juice on the side before giving you a juicy half chicken with fluffy golden turmeric rice. Just add the cold beer for perfection.

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. 

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.

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.

This busy little café is one of the oldest in Hue. On a busy corner by the side of the river, it mainly specializes in banh khoai, crispy pancakes stuffed with bean sprouts, shrimp, and little mounds of pork, served up with herbaceous side salads and a spicy peanut sauce. To eat, cut them in half, wrap them in herbs and rice paper, and dip. The shady seats on the sidewalk are perfectly positioned for watching life go by.

Didier Corlou is celebrated as a pioneer of fine dining in Vietnam thanks to his ventures in Hanoi; now, his culinary journey extends to Central Vietnam. Situated in a former spice house, the restaurant offers patrons an exquisite dining experience. A good choice is the tasting menu that showcases an array of dishes such as braised pork, and barracuda cooked in banana leaf, complemented by starters like banana flower salad with chicken, and spring rolls filled with mackerel, pork, and mushrooms.

In the Japanese Quarter, beside the river, is this classic Vietnamese restaurant resembling an upscale residence with its ornate armoires, wooden chairs, and a lantern-lit courtyard where you can listen to soft jazz. Lighter menu items such as baguettes, spring rolls, and salads are offered alongside duck or prawn curry, tofu, rice platters, and seafood dishes. Take note of the antique bar, once a "rice safe" used by families to protect their harvest.

Miss Ly was one of the first cooks in town to open her humble, market-edge restaurant to the trickle of travelers astute enough to have put Hoi An on their itinerary almost 20 years ago. Two decades later, Ly is still in the kitchen pouring her heart and soul into each dish served. Her Hoi An wontons, crispy rice-flour shells with a pocket of minced pork and shrimp, dressed with a fruity, Chinese-style sweet-and-sour salsa, are some of the best in town.

A couple of kilometers downstream from the Pub With Cold Beer, this rustic jungle hut, formerly called Wild Boar Eco Farm, is run by local tour operator Captain Cuong. The scenery here is awe-inspiring—swinging hammocks overlook the wilderness and Cuong’s prize collection of free-range Euro-Asian wild boar.

This opulent 40-seat restaurant is inside Ancient Hue Garden Houses. Blending cultural heritage and fine cuisine, it pays tribute to the last carving artists in Hue. The restaurant is famous for vividly recreating the authentic cuisines of Hue's royalty. Each dish is beautifully presented with vegetables sculpted into shapes of plants and animals. Expect an experience more than a meal with the Royal Court Dinner, an eight-course dinner with traditional music.

Reservations should be made at least four hours in advance.

No visit to Hue is complete without sampling the city's most famous breakfast dish, bun bo Hue, a glorious lemongrass-and-chili infused beef broth, served with slippery round noodles, beef, pork shank, and a fistful of fragrant herbs. It's not unlike fiery northern pho, and is best slurped from specialty kitchens; the best in Hue is Quan Cam, a tiny family-run noodle shop on Le Loi Street.

This vegetarian food stall is located right on the edge of Hue's Night Pedestrian Zone. This is the cheapest food stall in town with tasty plant-based dishes starting from 10,000d. It's overcrowded during full moon and new moon days (on the 14th, the 15th, the last and first day of each lunar month) when most of the Buddhist local people have vegetarian meals for religious purpose.