9 Best Restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Industrial chic meets art house tucked away in a colonial villa at this well-loved café. The food is reliably good, offering a range of contemporary café fusion fare including salads, sandwiches, cold cut platters, and Western favorites. Beautifully plated Vietnamese dishes include a very tasty caramelized pork and herb number and a solid broken rice with grilled pork. There is a second, larger restaurant with a bright upstairs retail space at 19 Le Thanh Ton.

World-class tea, cakes, pastries, and Australian café-style comfort food is served among antiques, objets d'art, and other treasures collected by globe-trotting chef and hotelier David Campbell. It's a very exotic feeling to be sitting on a vintage couch surrounded by beautiful things, using the free Wi-Fi and sipping top-quality TWG teas. High tea, brunch, or lunch can be served inside the antiques shop, on the terrace, or in the elaborate gazebo outside. The menu offers various baked goods, sandwiches, pies, and dishes such as lasagna and quiche. It's a great place to try Australian favorites such as lamingtons (chocolate cake with coconut), coconut ice, and sausage rolls, as well as European favorites like arancini balls.

Midway between the Reunification Palace and Notre Dame cathedral, overlooking the tall trees of April 30 Park, this is a great place to linger in exotic surroundings, whether for a meal or just a smoothie or coffee. The flavors are Mediterranean and Middle Eastern, the staff is attentive, and the location is prime. The appeal of Au Parc, in a restored colonial-era shopfront, is further enhanced by the children's playroom upstairs, which is supervised by a nanny on weekends from 11 am to 4 pm while brunch is served.

Non-sports fans are fully justified in hanging out in Dtwo Sportspub just for the awesome pub grub, including classic burgers, fish-and-chips, Cornish pasties, and beef stew. There's also distinctly non-pubby grub, such as a cheese board, salads, and eggs Benedict. The TV screens broadcasting sports aren't too loud, so the non-sporty types can focus on the food, or a game of pool out back.

Just a few doors from the War Remnants Museum, this vegetarian restaurant is a calm oasis that starts to restore flagging spirits from the first step past the pond and lush greenery into the stylish interior. The fresh and healthy pan-Asian menu and the vibe are similar to Hum Lounge in District 1, but with a focus that's more on food than cocktails. Try the square spring rolls, the visually appealing rainbow salad with sesame dressing, and the wild vegetable soup.

Even today, long after the war, you couldn't guess this little pho shop's secret: in an upstairs room here, a resistance cell planned the Ho Chi Minh City attacks of the 1968 Tet Offensive. After a delicious bowl of beef or chicken pho arrives, foreign visitors are usually presented with a photo album and guest book. It's usually possible to visit the humble room (for 10,000d per person), which remains much the same—except it now has the grand title, Command Post Office of Subdivision 6 in the General Offensive and Uprising of the Tet Offensive in 1968. The name of the shop, by the way, means "peace soup."

Serving a mishmash of international, Tex-Mex, and Vietnamese fare, Snap is an open-air family-oriented café-restaurant set in a large thatched hut overlooking a children's playground. Popular with the local expat community, Snap caters to non-families with its quieter library section tucked away on one side beside a manicured tropical garden. The restaurant tries hard to please all comers, with burger nights, quiz nights, live music, and an extensive menu. The staff is friendly, especially to kids. Snap is located in a complex with boutiques and other dining options, so leave some time to wander.

This restaurant chain does a surprisingly good take on traditional Vietnamese street food, of which many dishes require wrapping or rolling. If actual street food freaks you out with its proximity to traffic, noise, and dirt, this is a quiet, clean, lime green, and air-conditioned alternative. Its menu includes more than 40 items and 9 dipping sauces.