The only 5 restaurants in Hoi An I recommend (expat guide)

Most lists of restaurants in Hoi An are the same twenty names moved around in a different order. They’re built by copying the last list, not by eating the food. Fifty places on one page isn’t a recommendation. It’s a directory.

So this is five. Not the five with the most reviews, and not five that cover every cuisine and price point so nobody can complain something’s missing. Five I’d actually send someone to, and what each one is for.

• Quick Answer: The five restaurants in Hoi An I’d actually recommend are Morning Glory Original for a proper first sit-down meal, Com Ga Ba Buoi for chicken rice done the old way, Nu Eatery for small plates and a break from Vietnamese food, Quán Bánh Đập Bến Tre on Cam Nam island for banh dap by the river, and Cao Lau Thanh, which does cao lau and almost nothing else. Reservations only really matter at Morning Glory in high season.
• The Five, and What Each Is For:
  • Morning Glory Original: the tourist-friendly Hoi An tasting menu, done properly. 106 Nguyen Thai Hoc, 11am to 10pm.
  • Com Ga Ba Buoi: com ga since the 1950s, around 35,000 VND. Closed 2pm to 4:30pm.
  • Nu Eatery: bao buns and small plates in an alley, good for a night off from noodles. Closed Mondays.
  • Quán Bánh Đập Bến Tre: banh dap and hen xao, riverside, across the bridge on Cam Nam. 8am to 9:30pm.
  • Cao Lau Thanh: one dish, done by people who only do that dish. Closed Fridays.
• Prices Across the Five:
  • Morning Glory: 150,000 to 350,000 VND a dish, a real restaurant bill.
  • Com Ga Ba Buoi, Cao Lau Thanh: 35,000 to 50,000 VND, cash, no menu to speak of.
  • Nu Eatery: 60,000 to 120,000 VND a plate, and you’ll order three or four.
  • Bến Tre: under 50,000 a dish, two people eat well for 150,000.
• Opening Hours Catch Three of Them Out: Ba Buoi shuts between 2pm and 4:30pm, Cao Lau Thanh closes on Fridays, Nu Eatery closes on Mondays. Check before you walk over.

Why Five and Not Fifty

Every “best restaurants in Hoi An” page I’ve read pulls from the same handful of sources, which is why Morning Glory and Banh Mi Phuong turn up on all of them and why half the other forty names are filler nobody’s actually revisiting.

I don’t eat at fifty restaurants. I eat at about six on rotation and I have opinions about all of them, which is a different kind of authority than having visited fifty places once each for a photo.

So this is the five I’d stand behind, and what I think each one does that the others don’t, because that’s more useful to you than a ranking with stars next to it.

There’s no Indian, no Italian, no Korean here. Hoi An has all of those now and some are good, but that’s a different list for a different search and I’m not going to pad this one out with a cuisine I don’t actually order.

Morning Glory Original

• Location: 106 Nguyen Thai Hoc, Ancient Town
• Hours: 11am to 10pm, seven days.
• Prices: 150,000 to 350,000 VND a dish.

I’d book this for one meal, on the first or second night, and I wouldn’t feel odd about it despite it being the most tourist-facing name on this list.

It’s Ms Vy’s restaurant, in a restored colonial building on Nguyen Thai Hoc, with close to sixty Hoi An and central Vietnamese dishes on the menu. Fried wonton, white rose, mackerel in banana leaf, the stuffed squid. Restaurant standard, not street standard, and priced accordingly.

What you’re paying for is a kitchen that can put every regional specialty on one table in one sitting, which no street stall does, and a room that’s pleasant to sit in for two hours.

It sits at 4.3 across more than 8,000 reviews, which for a place this busy and this tourist-facing is a better number than it looks. The common complaint is crowding, not cooking.

I get asked whether Morning Glory or the sister restaurant, Morning Glory Signature, is better, and they’re not really doing the same job.

Signature is the upscale version with the river view and the reservation, Original is the one I actually go back to, and the food is closer to what you’d get invited to eat at someone’s house.

Reservations matter here in high season, less so for lunch. It’s a good first meal precisely because it shows you six dishes at once, so you know what to go looking for on the street for the rest of your trip.

Com Ga Ba Buoi

• Location: 22 Phan Chau Trinh, near the Ba Le Well
• Hours: 10:30am to 2pm, then 4:30pm to 7pm. Two sittings, not one.
• Prices: around 35,000 VND.

This is the com ga place, and it’s been running since the 1950s, which in a town this size means several generations of the same family doing one thing.

One bowl: shredded chicken, turmeric rice cooked in the stock, a scattering of herbs, black pepper, chilli jam, a small soup on the side. That’s the whole menu, more or less, and it’s the reason I still think com ga is a better introduction to Hoi An food than cao lau, because nothing about it needs explaining.

Now the timing, because this is where people get caught. They shut at 2pm and don’t reopen until 4:30. Plenty of guides tell you to beat the rush by turning up mid-afternoon, which means a closed door.

The two good slots are right on 10:30 when they open, or 4:30 when they open again for the evening. Avoid half past twelve, which is when the whole town arrives at once.

Its Google rating sits at 3.8 across more than 3,000 reviews, lower than you’d expect for somewhere this well known, and that’s mostly down to volume and crowding, not the chicken. The space is small, it’s the family’s house, and the staff get overwhelmed at peak.

It sells out. If the evening sitting has nothing left, that’s not a bad sign, it means they cooked what they needed for the day and stopped.

Nu Eatery

• Location: Down an alley at 10A Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, near the Japanese Covered Bridge
• Hours: noon to 9pm. Closed Mondays.
• Prices: 60,000 to 120,000 VND a plate.

This is the one I send people to on their third or fourth night, when they’ve had a lot of noodles and want something that isn’t.

Small plates, Asian fusion, not strictly Vietnamese, in a narrow two-storey building you could easily walk past.

Bao buns, a pulled pork banh mi that isn’t trying to be a traditional one, tofu rolls I order even though I’m not the target audience for a vegetarian dish and they’re good enough that I don’t care. The cinnamon scrolls come up in review after review and they’re worth going back for on their own.

Portions are small on purpose. You order three or four plates between two people and it comes out about the same as a normal dinner.

4.6 across roughly 2,500 reviews, which is the highest rating of anywhere on this list, and it doesn’t open until noon, so it’s a lunch and dinner place only.

It’s the easiest yes on this list if you’re travelling with someone vegetarian or vegan. The kitchen clearly knows what it’s doing with plants, and it isn’t just removing the meat from a meat dish and calling it done.

Quán Bánh Đập Bến Tre

• Location: 98/1 Nguyen Tri Phuong, Cam Nam island, across the bridge from the Central Market
• Hours: 8am to 9:30pm, seven days.
• Prices: Under 50,000 VND a dish.

This is the one that isn’t in the Ancient Town at all, and it’s the one I’d miss most if it closed.

Banh dap is two layers of rice cracker, one soft and one crisp, that you press together and dip in a fermented fish sauce with pineapple and chilli in it. Hen xao is baby clams stir-fried with herbs, from the river right there.

Bến Tre does both, sitting by the water on Cam Nam, which is a five minute walk or bike ride from the market and feels like a different town once you’re across the bridge. It’s a small place, under a hundred reviews, which is partly why I like it and partly why I’d check it’s open before making the trip.

Their cao lau is also better than it has any right to be at 40,000 a bowl, and people who come for the clams end up ordering it.

One practical thing. You’re sitting on a riverbank with no air conditioning, in the shade, with a fan if you ask. Bring mosquito repellent. It’s the single most repeated note from people who’ve eaten there and it’s the only thing that turns a good evening into an itchy one.

Two people eat generously for under 150,000 VND with drinks. Go in the late afternoon with a cold beer. That’s the whole recommendation.

Cao Lau Thanh

• Location: 26 Thai Phien, no real menu
• Hours: 7am to 7pm. Closed Fridays.
• Prices: 35,000 VND small, 50,000 regular.

One dish, cao lau, made by people who’ve made only that for over two decades, which is a different thing from a restaurant that has cao lau on a page of sixty options.

I’ve made the case elsewhere for why cao lau specifically needs the Bá Lễ well water and the Cham Island ash to taste right, and a place like this is where you actually feel that, because there’s nothing else on the plate distracting from the noodle.

Thick, chewy, a few crisp squares of fried dough on top, barely any broth. If your only cao lau was at a riverside restaurant with an English menu, this is worth the detour to compare.

Two things that trip people up. They close on Fridays, which nobody expects from a noodle shop, and they run out. Reviewers turning up at 1pm report being the last ones served for the day. Go in the morning or at the start of lunch.

It’s small, it’s stainless steel stools, and there’s a good chance you’ll be sharing a table with someone eating the same bowl in silence, which is exactly what I want from a specialist noodle shop and not what I want from anywhere else on this list.

What I Left Off, and Why

Banh Mi Phuong

Excellent, and famous for good reason, with over 16,000 Google reviews behind it. It isn’t here because it’s a banh mi stop and not a sit-down meal, and it deserves its own page. That’s in the best banh mi in Hoi An, along with the Madam Khanh argument.

Streets Restaurant Café and the other central-location, mixed-menu places

Fine, reliable, aimed squarely at a table that wants Vietnamese and Western options on the same menu so nobody has to negotiate. Nothing wrong with them. Nothing that makes me choose them over the five above either.

Anywhere directly on the river with a view as the main selling point

The food at riverside restaurants is rarely the reason to go, the seat is, and that’s a fair trade some evenings. You’re paying for the location, and it’s worth being clear about that before the bill arrives.

Does Hoi An Have Michelin Restaurants?

This answer changed recently and most pages haven’t caught up, so it’s worth setting out properly.

The MICHELIN Guide arrived in Vietnam in 2023 and added Da Nang in June 2024. The 2026 selection, announced on 4 June 2026, covers Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang, with 193 establishments in total. Da Nang accounts for 47 of them, including one One-Star restaurant, one Green Star, 23 Bib Gourmand and 23 MICHELIN Selected.

Here’s the part that matters for Hoi An. Since the July 2025 administrative merger, Hoi An sits inside Da Nang City, so Hoi An addresses now fall within the Da Nang selection. A Hoi An restaurant can and does appear in the Bib Gourmand and MICHELIN Selected lists.

So: no starred restaurant in Hoi An, and the single Da Nang star is over in Ngu Hanh Son. But “Hoi An has nothing to do with Michelin” is out of date, and so is every list that says so.

The thing to watch for is the opposite error. Plenty of pages describe a restaurant as “Michelin recommended” when what they mean is that a food blog with the word Michelin somewhere in its name mentioned it. Check the official guide before you believe a badge on a shopfront.

If you want a proper tasting-menu evening, Morning Glory Signature or Home Hoi An are the closest version of that here, and neither is going to feel like Copenhagen.

A Few Practical Things Across All Five

Four of the five are cash, small notes, and nobody’s offended if you’re counting out 5,000 VND notes for the change.

Com Ga Ba Buoi and Cao Lau Thanh have staff who know the English words for the two things on the menu and that’s all they need to know. Morning Glory and Nu Eatery both run in English without any trouble.

Ba Buoi and Cao Lau Thanh are lunch places at heart and both sell out. Morning Glory and Nu Eatery run into the evening properly. Bến Tre is the most flexible of the five, though I wouldn’t turn up at nine expecting a full menu.

Where These Sit in a Short Trip

If you’re only here two or three days, I wouldn’t try to hit all five. Morning Glory for one proper evening, Com Ga Ba Buoi or Cao Lau Thanh for a lunch, and Bến Tre if you’re already cycling out towards Cam Nam.

Watch the closures when you plan it. A Monday with Nu Eatery on the list, or a Friday with Cao Lau Thanh on it, and you’re walking somewhere for nothing.

For the fuller picture of what to eat here, as opposed to where, the dish-by-dish version of this is in the best foods in Hoi An. If you want someone walking you through several stops in one evening and not picking your own, that’s what an evening walking food tour does, and it’s worth knowing that before you book one expecting different ground than this list covers.

I’ve built these five into the food day of my Hoi An itinerary as well, in the order I’d actually eat them across a short stay.

Questions I Get Asked

What’s the best restaurant in Hoi An? For one proper sit-down meal, Morning Glory Original. For the best single bowl of anything, Cao Lau Thanh. They’re answers to different questions.

Do I need to book? Only at Morning Glory, and only in high season or for dinner. The other four don’t take reservations and don’t need them.

Are there Michelin restaurants in Hoi An? Hoi An falls inside the MICHELIN Guide’s Da Nang selection since the 2025 merger, so Bib Gourmand and Selected entries here are real. There’s no starred restaurant in Hoi An.

How much is dinner in Hoi An? 35,000 to 50,000 VND at a specialist noodle or rice shop, 60,000 to 120,000 a plate at Nu Eatery, 150,000 to 350,000 a dish at Morning Glory.

Which of these is best for vegetarians? Nu Eatery by a distance. Cao Lau Thanh and Bến Tre have very little that works, and Bến Tre’s own staff will tell you so.

Can I pay by card? At Morning Glory, yes. Assume cash everywhere else and carry small notes.

What time do they sell out? Ba Buoi and Cao Lau Thanh both cook a set amount. Early lunch is safe, mid-afternoon is not.

Is Morning Glory too touristy? It’s the most tourist-facing name here and it still cooks well. 4.3 across 8,000 reviews, with crowding as the main complaint.

Five Is the Point

A short list means leaving places out that someone else would put first, and that’s the trade I’m making on purpose.

Three days in Hoi An is five or six meals. A page with fifty names on it hands the decision straight back to you, which is the opposite of help. These are the five I’d eat across those three days, in roughly that order, and if you only manage three of them you’ll have eaten better than most people do here in a week.

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