Food in Hoi An and Hue (Vietnam)
By the time we got to Hoi An, we’d been in Vietnam for 3 weeks, and Thailand for 10 days. The increased cost of food in Hoi An was a little surprise.
Six dollars for dinner?! $2 for a cup of coffee? That’s crazy.
Hoi An is a resort town and the prices match if you buy tourist food.
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There are three categories of food–at least in our minds.
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Market Food: at the night markets, there are stands selling lots of fried things and things on skewers. A lot of this food is geared to tourists. A skewer of okra was 30,000 Dong. This seems cheap to tourists and expensive to locals.
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Restaurant Food: most are geared toward tourists, and the prices are at least double if not more, and the food often not as good. We also found the service much slower. However, you will have a table and full-sized chairs and perhaps air conditioning and perhaps be able to use a credit card. The restaurants will also tempt you with “all the Hoi An specialties in one place!” I’d rather go to a local spot that specializes in just one of those specialties.
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Local/Street Food: this is what we recommend. Prices should be:
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Main dish: 35-55K Dong. This includes pho or pretty much anything else in a bowl. Maybe up to 70K if you are getting something chock-full of meat. Pork is cheaper than beef.
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Fruit: a whole pineapple (they are so cute and sweet) or whole mango, cut up in both cases, should be 20K
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Dessert: 10K. Never more than 20K, and the higher price is usually for packaged goods like several cookies.
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Beer: 15-20K Dong for the local beer. Bia Saigon and Hanoi are often 25K dong
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Water bottle: 10K Dong
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Tea: 15K Dong
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Coffee: 15K Dong (tried the local salt coffee. It’s very good. A tourist restaurant wanted 45K Dong for it!! Lady on the street with a cart charged 15K.)
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Oooh, so good. It’s sweet and salty. The only problem is you have to be patient and let the ice melt a little and stir completely before you drink. Get it on the street for 15K, or more at a restaurant. You can get egg coffee at cafes here. If you will not be in Hanoi then it’s (probably) worth a try–we did not try it here but loved it in Hanoi. Find a street cart at about 1 Duong Phan Boi Chau Street in front of Laundry Mr Clean.
Banh Trang Nuong, which hawkers may call “Vietnamese pizza” to get you interested, is a good snack. It’s a rice paper circle moistened with a beaten egg and topped with pork floss, sometimes other meats, and sauces. Check out a few stalls to see whose toppings look the most appetizing to you. If you are vegetarian, let the vendor know via Google Translate or Papago. The sauce and the egg will still be good. We make these at home (having been schooled by Tik Tok) and so we were excited to try the local versions.
Mi Quang Ong Hai (note this isn’t their website, but an article describing the restaurant). We had both of their specialties (Cau Lau and Mi Quang), and both were good, but we preferred the Mi Quang. Some places will let you pick the meat. It is typically eaten for breakfast and lunch. It contains a small amount of broth, some yummy turmeric noodles, hard-boiled quail egg, loads of fresh herbs and greens that you add in yourself, and shrimp chips or sesame crackers and peanuts. Mi Quang Ong Hai also has a ginger tea that is very strong. If you like ginger we recommend it. Of course, an ice-cold beer for pennies always goes well with this dish. EM’s bakery is around the corner; read about that below under “desserts”. We tried mi quang at another spot near My Son and realized just how superior the bowl at Mi Quang Ong Hai is compared to ordinary versions.
These are items available throughout Vietnam and we enjoyed tasting the regional differences. At the restaurant Cau Lau Ba Le we didn’t order Cau Lau–but we did get Banh Xeo, morning glory (also called water spinach), and papaya. They were very good renditions. The morning glory especially was packed with garlic and probably the best version we had in all of Vietnam.
Baby Mustard Restaurant and Cooking School is another place we recommend. The papaya salad was different from others we’ve tried in and out of Hoi An. It was slightly spicer and the sauce less sweet. The chicken was lean. We also had mint beef salad with cabbage microgreens. There was no mint anywhere, but the greens were good and the beef was lean. Our third dish was an eggplant in clay pot which was excellent. Read our page 7 things to do in Hoi An to hear more about the Vegetable Village where Baby Mustard is located, and how to get there.
EM’s Bakery (313 Nguyá»…n Duy Hiệu, Cẩm Châu, Há»™i An, Quảng Nam. @emsnewnordic). We do need real chocolate when we travel and this place served us well. The chocolate cake with passion fruit mousse was very chocolatey and the mousse nice and tart. Chocolate roll cake also excellent. The truffles are a mochi-like consistency and very rich; all the insides are the same regardless of exterior decor. Chocolate cookies were crispy. They were ok. (Around the corner is Mr Hai’s restaurant, which is a great stop for Mi Quang; see review above.)
Che bap (sweet corn soup) and other puddings: these should cost you 10K per bowl. Our favorite che bap seller is located within the fruit/veggie section of the market. We tried her che bap, a black bean pudding, and one that we think was sweet potato. They were all good, and all get topped with coconut milk.
We tried banh mi in Hanoi and thought they were fine; we didn’t really like the slices of pate and there weren’t enough vegetables, pickled or otherwise. In Hoi An, we had much tastier banh mi. The pate in Hoi An is crumbly, more like a ground sausage flavored with herbs and garlic. Additionally, they put in herbs and vegetables, such as cucumber. Although the places we tried also put in shaved green papaya, we couldn’t taste it. We tried a total of 3 banh mi places. All the blogs talk about two dominant banh mi restaurants, the one that Anthony Bourdain visited for his No Reservations show and that he called the best banh mi ever (Banh Mi Phuong), and the one everyone else says is the best (Madam Khanh Banh Mi aka The Banh Mi Queen). The third restaurant we tried was a recommendation from our hotel assistant manager called Banh Mi Sum. She said the locals go here so they don’t have to wait at Banh Mi Queen, and because it is cheaper. We had BBQ pork and chicken banh mi at each location.
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#1 is Madam Khanh Banh Mi . The meat was not fatty at all and we liked the sauce. If you want it spicy you must ask because their default for Westerners is no spice. We also had corn milk (tastes like liquid cornbread) and lotus seed milk (a little like sweet rice milk) and a fruit smoothie.
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#2 was Banh Mi Sum. This was about to tie for first place but a piece of gristle in the BBQ pork put them in second place. They had more herbs than Madam Khanh, however. If there is a long wait at Madam Khanh, or you’d prefer to start with the banh mi eaten by more locals than Westerners, start here. We have a video below of the chef prepping our sandos. They put three different sauces on here, one of them slightly spicy. (149 Tran Hung Dao, Minh An Ward, Hoi An)
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In 3rd place is Banh Mi Phuong. We couldn’t taste the pate (or see it really). They use American cheese on some sandwiches. They did have a lot of veggies on it, which was good, but Sarah didn’t like the sauce much. There was some gristle in the BBQ pork as well. So though this was 3rd place, there’s probably room for a few more entries between it and our 2nd place choice.
Anatomy of the banh mi: The pate is in the bowl above the sliced meats. There are several sauces she puts on as well. “Egg sauce” is referred to at some restaurants; they all use this, and it’s basically homemade mayonnaise.
Hue specialties include various banh – as an FYI, we couldn’t find these specialties even in Hoi An, so while you may find these in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, Hue seems to be the only place to easily find these regional specialties. We were excited to try as many as possible because a Vietnamese restaurant in our California hometown serves banh beo and we love them. We tried banh beo, banh nam, and banh ram it at Quan Hanh (11-15 Pho Duc Chinh, Hue) when we spent the day visiting the Imperial City, Thien Mu Pagoda and Khai Dinh’s tomb. We also found banh beo from a street vendor in Hoi An; her picture is below so you can look for her. We also tried these at a restaurant called Vy’s Market Restaurant and Cooking School that is very popular with tourists, but we would not recommend this restaurant.
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Banh beo are steamed rice cakes (with the consistency of mochi) topped with shrimp, pork floss and peanuts.
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Banh nam are rice dough pancakes stuffed with shrimp and pork, wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed.
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Banh ram it, our favorite of the bunch, is a sticky rice cake topping a crispy rice cake topped with shrimp and pork.
All three were served with a sweetened fish sauce with vinegar that really enhanced the flavors in each one. The one banh we didn’t try, banh loc, is very similar to banh nam but uses cassava flour instead of rice flour to make the dough.
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