10 Best Restaurants in Hanoi, Vietnam

This simple eatery compensates for its lack of sophistication with giant-size portions of the delicate banh cuon, steamed rice rolls stuffed with ground pork and chopped wood-ear mushrooms. Watch the resident cooks painstakingly roll out their sheets of rice noodle and spoon on the filling and feel your mouth start to water. There are three options: chicken, pork, or shrimp and pork. All three are worth trying.

This venue is spotlessly clean, and despite its popularity with tourists is still very much the real deal. Like all the best restaurants purveying local favorites, this place specializes in one dish only: bun bo nam bo (a southern beef and noodle dish). Translated as "southern style rice noodles with beef," this mixture of vermicelli noodles, beef, lettuce, cucumber, shallots, bean sprouts, cilantro, and chopped peanuts is more commonly found in Ho Chi Minh City. Be sure to mix the concoction thoroughly with your chopsticks to experience the alchemy created by the small serving of broth-drenched greens at the base of the bowl.

Serving creamy cappuccinos and delicious lattes in calm and quiet surroundings, Habakuk might be the best spot in the city for withdrawing from Hanoi's chaos with a book and a drink. Though best known for its excellent coffee, Habakuk morphs into a bistro serving delicious lasagna in the evenings.

When it comes to street food, Hanoians don't go in for much ostentation and the eating area here is decidedly prosaic; just a few communal tables under a couple of bare lightbulbs. What matters is the expertly judged broth, the light rice noodles, and the delicious meat, which is peeled in strips from hulking slabs of brisket then dunked in the broth for seconds to cook. Don't worry too much about identifying the restaurant: you'll recognize it from the long lines of people waiting outside.

Drawing crowds with enormous servings of bun cha (grilled pork with rice vermicelli), Bun Cha 34 does not fail to deliver good quality bowls for a mere 40,000d per dish. Customers rave over the charred pork and fragrant herbs. You can also order a serving of fried spring rolls on the side. Be prepared for a street food experience, as the tiny tables and chairs regularly spill out onto the sidewalk.

Bun Cha Huong Lien has wholeheartedly embraced the alias Bun Cha Obama since 2016, when the erstwhile president visited Hanoi and dined here with celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain. The bun cha (grilled pork and rice vermicelli noodles) and nem hai san (seafood spring rolls) are decent, but it's worth visiting just for the photography documenting the occasion. It's plastered all over the eatery.

Loading T won fame in 2017 when CNN featured their egg coffee, a unique cinnamon-infused take on the Hanoi specialty drink. The cafe is notable for its extraordinary architecture; it sits within a grand colonial-era house that was appropriated and partitioned by the government in the 1950s. Other segments of the building house boutiques, such as Hien Van Ceramics.

Colloquially known as "Chicken Street," this is the place to come for delicious barbecued poultry served right off the street. The street is lined with vendors working near-identical alchemy with a limited menu of grilled chicken wings, legs, and feet; sweet potatoes; and bread that's been brushed with honey before being toasted. The resulting dish is served with chili sauce and pickled cucumbers in sweet vinegar and washed down with icy bottles of local beer.

More of a snack and less of a fully fledged meal, pho cuon (fresh spring rolls with beef) is a Truc Bach specialty. This family-run eatery serves up some of the freshest and tastiest rolls in the neighborhood on a handful of tables that occasionally spill out onto the street.