15 Best Restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Voted one of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2021, Anan Saigon puts a whimsically modern twist on Vietnamese street food. Talented Vietnamese-American chef-owner Peter Cuong Franklin is credited for pioneering Vietnamese fusion cuisine, often elevating Vietnamese flavors with French cooking techniques. The main restaurant is on the ground floor but also explore the upper floors to Nhau Nhau (third floor) for cocktails with an Old Saigon vibe, Pot Au Pho noodle bar (fourth floor), and the rooftop bar (sixth floor) for views of the neighboring wet market backed by one of Saigon's tallest buildings.

Always packed with locals, this narrow eatery serves up Ho Chi Minh City's best banh cuon (steamed rice flour crepes stuffed with minced pork and wood ear mushrooms) and an excellent version of the central Vietnamese banh beo (steamed rice flour pancakes topped with dried prawn). Just order the first three items on the menu and you'll be in foodie heaven in no time.

The name translates as opium poppy, and this chic little eatery is in a corner of the former La Manufacture d'Opium, the French-controlled opium refinery and warehouse. It offers contemporary Vietnamese cuisine with knockout flavors and a wine list that works with the local cuisine. The art deco interior is elegant, with wrought-iron chairs, cast-iron lamps, hand stenciling, and a leafy outdoor terrace. Standout dishes include mustard-leaf rolls; pink pomelo, squid, and crab salad; and soft shell crabs in green rice batter with passion fruit sauce. The kids' menu will also make mini foodies happy.

With a thriving indoor kitchen garden in the center of the restaurant, Secret House evokes the feeling of olden days Vietnamese countryside living; the home-style menu is short for a Vietnamese place, but every dish is reliably delicious with surprising attention to presentation. Schedule a visit early in your trip so you can return to try all the delicious dishes you couldn't fit in first time around. Food is ordered Vietnam-style, to be placed in the middle and shared. Do try to find room for the chao tom (pork and prawn grilled on sugarcane sticks).

A no-frills, family-run institution, Banh Xeo 46A is the go-to place for one of southern Vietnam's most cherished culinary creations: banh xeo (literally, "sizzling crepe")—a crispy pancake made with rice flour, coconut milk, and a smidgen of turmeric, and filled with bean sprouts, onion, shrimp, and pork. Break off a piece and wrap it up in a giant mustard leaf along with a handful of herbs and greens, and dunk it in a fish sauce-based dip laced with chilies. The menu has been expanded to include other Vietnamese dishes but the banh xeo is still the star. There's a room with air-conditioning, but sitting outside and watching the food being made is more fun.

Down a small street near Ben Thanh Market, this cute little eatery serves cheap and cheerful Vietnamese food at its finest. The staff are friendly, the food is tasty, and there's a range of interesting and refreshing drinks and desserts. If you're into snails, its sister restaurant at 136/9 Le Thanh Ton is where to go.

Serving traditional Vietnamese dishes with an emphasis on healthy, environmentally friendly eating, Cuc Gach has succeeded in carving out its own niche in the city's dining scene. Set in an old French home that has received a modern makeover and is furnished with repurposed colonial-era furniture—including a wooden bed that's been converted into a dining table—this is Vietnamese with a green and design-y edge. Reservations are recommended but not essential.

Huong Lai serves traditional Southern Vietnamese home cooking with a very high feel-good factor—all the staffers are orphans and disadvantaged young people, given a helping hand by the philanthropic Japanese owner, who calls his enterprise a training restaurant. The interior is delightfully rustic, the service is friendly, the English language skills excellent, the food is authentic, and over the course of more than a decade, Huong Lai has launched more than 60 young people into careers in the five-star hospitality sector.

Catering to the young switched-on set, ID Café is popular with digital nomads, bloggers, locals, expats, and tourists alike. They come for its groovy interior design, high-speed Internet, coffee, and very tasty food, including several vegetarian options.

A quirk of fate made the ever-smiling Nguyen Thi Thanh an international television superstar, yet fame has not wrought many changes to her humble food stand (although in a different location). The Lunch Lady, who famously served celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain on his No Reservations TV show in 2009, has a rolling menu of a different dish every day (which means no real choice). It's a great way to try street food local-style, on plastic chairs around low metal tables.

It's not compulsory to eat the fresh spring rolls/summer rolls or side dishes that are served once you sit down, but if you try one, you will be charged for the whole plate. Just wave them away if you don't want them.

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 what is described as "redesigned" Vietnamese cuisine with a focus on fresh ingredients, the sleek and artsy Propaganda does nontraditional takes on traditional dishes, especially fresh spring rolls. You can avoid menu confusion by choosing the 510,000d or 580,000d discovery menu of four courses, three glasses of wine, and organic green tea. Midway between the Reunification Palace and the Notre Dame Cathedral, Propaganda is the perfect spot to recharge during a long hot day of sightseeing, while admiring some (you guessed it) wartime propaganda art.

Sample some of Ho Chi Minh City's best street food from the vendors at the front of Tan Dinh Market (Cho Tan Dinh). The bun rieu (noodle soup with rice paddy crab and tofu) and suon nuong (grilled pork) are especially recommended, as is che, the Vietnamese dessert-in-a-glass that's a popular afternoon snack. The vendors here have limited English but they are familiar with the fine art of point-and-order.

Australian celebrity chef Luke Nguyen has given this longtime tourist-centric restaurant a new lease on life with an innovative "modern Vietnamese" menu and a stylish refit of the interior. The name, the central location, and the beautiful art deco building remain the same, but everything else is fresh and exciting.

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.