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. No Michelin stars here, Hoi An doesn’t have any, and 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.
  • Com Ga Ba Buoi: com ga since the 1950s, 35,000 VND, near the Ba Le Well.
  • Nu Eatery: bao buns and small plates in an alley, good for a night off from noodles.
  • Quán Bánh Đập Bến Tre: banh dap and hen xao, riverside, across the bridge on Cam Nam.
  • Cao Lau Thanh: one dish, done by people who only do that dish.
• Prices Across the Five:
  • Morning Glory: 150,000–350,000 VND a dish, a real restaurant bill.
  • Com Ga Ba Buoi, Cao Lau Thanh: 30,000–40,000 VND, cash, no menu to speak of.
  • Nu Eatery: 60,000–120,000 VND a plate, and you’ll order three or four.
  • Bến Tre: under 50,000 a dish, two people eat well for 150,000.

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
• 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.

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: Near the Ba Le Well, bright yellow building
• Prices: 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.

I’ll say the honest thing about this place, which is that its Google rating sits lower than you’d expect for somewhere this well known, and that’s mostly down to volume and crowding, not the chicken.

Go at an odd hour instead of half past twelve. Half two, and you’ll get a table straight away for the same bowl everyone was queuing for at lunch.

It sells out. If you turn up at four and there’s 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 near the Japanese Covered Bridge
• 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.

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.

It’s popular enough now that there’s a sister space next door under the same roof, and at peak times that can mean a short wait.

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, instead of just removing the meat from a meat dish and calling it done.

Quán Bánh Đập Bến Tre

• Location: Cam Nam island, across the bridge from the Central Market
• 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.

I’ll flag the one thing reviewers mention, which is a slightly damp, mossy smell near the water on some visits. It hasn’t put me off going back, but I’d rather tell you than have you notice it and wonder if something’s wrong. The food’s the reason to go, and 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: Near the stadium, no real menu
• Prices: 30,000 to 40,000 VND.

One dish, cao lau, made by people who’ve made only that for years, 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.

It’s small, it’s stainless steel stool, 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. It isn’t here because it’s a banh mi stop, not a sit-down meal, and it deserves its own page instead of a slot on this one. I’ve written that one separately.

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. I’d rather be honest that you’re paying for the location.

Fine dining, Michelin-style

Hoi An doesn’t have a Michelin-starred restaurant, and searches for one keep turning up guides listing places that have simply been recommended by a website with Michelin in the name. If you want a proper tasting-menu evening, Morning Glory Signature or Home Hoi An are the closer version of that here, and neither is going to feel like Copenhagen.

A Few Practical Things Across All Five

None of these take card as a given. Morning Glory does. The other four are cash, small notes, and nobody’s offended if you’re counting out 5,000 VND notes for the change.

Vietnamese, mostly. 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.

Opening hours drift. Ba Buoi and Cao Lau Thanh are lunch places at heart and can be finished for the day by six. Morning Glory and Nu Eatery run into the evening properly. Bến Tre is more flexible, though I wouldn’t turn up after 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.

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 instead of 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 3 days in Hoi An itinerary as well, in the order I’d actually eat them across a short stay.

Tell Me What I’m Missing

Five is a short list on purpose, and it means I’m leaving places out that someone else would put first.

If there’s somewhere you think earns a spot here, I’d like to hear the name and what you ordered, in the comment below.

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