24 Best Restaurants in The Central Coast, Vietnam

Madam Phuong, the shop owner, serves from a simple little take-away counter, next door to a bakery on the edge of Old Town. When famed foodie Anthony Bourdain visited, he declared the banh mi served here to be quite possibly the best in Vietnam; and he might just have been right. What you get here is a symphony in a sandwich, and though both her menu and popularity have grown, Phuong is still serving up the same secret family recipes and silence-inducing sandwiches. Bourdain's favorite banh mi deluxe is a pork feast consisting of a mouth-melting slow-roasted five-spiced fillet, a rich peppery pate, a handful of herbs, pickled vegetables, and finished off with a generous scoop of mayonnaise, smoked chili sauce, and messy fried egg. Phuong also has vegetarian alternatives; ask for banh mi chay.

A great place to stop for a midday drink and refreshing splash in the river, this bar sits between two large bomb craters left during the American war. Run jointly by a Vietnamese couple and Australian couple, the bar is halfway between Phong Nha village and Farmstay Village. In the winter they’ll also keep a fire raging to warm you up on your Bong Lai Valley bike tour.

Fusing art, music, history, and cuisine, this 19th-century house in Hoi An's Old Quarter has been beautifully restored and offers silver service at remarkable prices. Slightly overshadowed by the setting, the menu is Vietnamese-meets-modern cuisine with such dishes as bean sprout dumplings, mango and lotus salad, caramelized pork, and wok-fried ancient noodles.

No visit to Dong Ha is complete without a visit to this cheerful spot in the heart of town. It's both a charity café (Mr. Tam employs and supports deaf people in the area) and a one-stop information shop, without the hard sell. The menu is a wholesome mix of excellent Vietnamese and Western staples, including pizza, banh mi, and half-decent espresso. Tam also employs local war veterans and offers excellent tours of the DMZ and surrounding area.

If you are staying overnight in Dong Ha, Tam's also offers decent accommodations at very cheap prices (starting at 160,000d) as well as guided tours to the DMZ.

At the midway point of one of the most incredible (and strenuous) 22-km (13½-mile) bicycle loops in the Bong Lai Valley, with views over rice fields and the river, the Pub With Cold Beer has hammocks, a pool table, and, in season, tubes for floating down the river. It’s a beautiful spot to unwind and regain energy for a few hours, which is how long your chicken lunch is going to take to prepare once you've chosen your live bird.

As the first fully interactive street food experience in Vietnam, this buzzy, upscale food hall, owned by local-celebrity chef Ms. Vy, attracts a steady stream of enthusiastic foodies keen to take a culinary tour of Hoi An’s gastronomic classics. The menu here is visual, and diners are invited to wander among the various food stations where traditional dishes like cau lao noodles, banh mi, and savory country pancakes are made to order, to be devoured on simple bench seating arranged in the central courtyard. The fixed-price all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet is well worth shelving your diet for, and don’t forget to take a peek at the Weird and Wonderful stall.

A favorite with locals, Am Phu ("hell restaurant"), has been in operation for more than 80 years, serving excellent Vietnamese cuisine. It's famous locally for com am phu, a colorful rice, pork, shrimp, and herb specialty dish—the seven colors of this dish represent the first seven steps of Buddha. This isn't a tourist spot; everyone eats together at large tables covered with red plastic tablecloths. Although there are no prices listed on the menu, most dishes cost less than 70,000d depending on how large a serving is requested.

Local families who come in droves to this popular no-frills diner make out-of-town visitors feel warmly welcome, even if you don't master the art of rolling the perfect banh xeo. There’s no menu; just pull up a stool and within minutes you’ll be presented with pork skewers, crispy pancakes stuffed with bean sprouts, deep-fried shrimp spring rolls, rice paper, various greens, a satay-style dip, and an array of condiments. Go hungry; portions are large, but the 175,000d set price is not.

Don't be put off by the grungy interior of this restaurant. The quality of the decor is in inverse proportion to the quality of the food. This favorite among locals serves only eight dishes, all specialties of the region. The price of 30,000d per dish should allow you to try them all—if you're hungry enough.

This inspired little beach club 15 km (10 miles) from Hue has shady beach cabanas, hammocks, and a large cobalt-blue fishing boat that serves as the bar. It's a laid-back place, with a simple Vietnamese seafood menu, where you feel a world away from the annoyances of the city. They make it easy to stay with a few huts housing dorm-style accommodations. Its sister accommodation Villa Louise with tastefully designed ocean view villas and three swimming pools is a gem in the crown of this stretch of pristine beach. The Beach Bar is on private land, and you pay 100,000d on weekdays and 150,000d during weekends and on holidays to enter (which is refundable against food and drink orders).

A couple of kilometers downstream from the Pub With Cold Beer, this rustic jungle hut, formerly called Wild Boar Eco Farm, is run by local tour operator Captain Cuong. The scenery here is awe-inspiring—swinging hammocks overlook the wilderness and Cuong’s prize collection of free-range Euro-Asian wild boar.

The standard but good Vietnamese food served here—spring rolls and fried rice—may not be spectacular, but the setting is: a beautifully restored colonial villa on the banks of the Thu Bon River. In the evenings you can sit and sip a drink in the lovely garden out back as you watch local fisherfolk ply their trade. The stylish interior has ceiling beams, tile floors, and classic Chinese-style wooden furniture.

It might be overcrowded during lunch and dinner, but this open restaurant's wide range of Hue specialties such as nem lui (grilled pork sausage on lemongrass stick), banh khoai (savory pancake), tapas like beo, nam, loc, and noodles with grilled pork and salad are all worth the wait.

Fresh daily ingredients are the pride of this small restaurant located near the iconic Truong Tien Bridge. While the restaurant’s menu features a wide range of Vietnamese and local cuisines, their pizza is the best in town. 

Packed with tourists and teeming with easy riders and souvenir hawkers, this basic restaurant located near the entrance to the citadel is run by guidebook sweetheart, Mr. Lac. Sadly, what once was a great little local spot churning out a couple of delicious staple Hue dishes has turned into a giant enterprise with an equally giant menu and following. Despite the lackluster food, you can't help but admire Lac for building such a successful business, especially as he is deaf and mute and lives in a country where opportunities for the disabled are few and far between. Eat elsewhere, but do drop in for a drink (preferably a beer), and wander upstairs, where the secret of Lac's success is revealed. Every customer is given a wooden stick and bolt bottle opener, fashioned and signed by Lac himself. The lucky few travelers that have spent enough time with him to appreciate his desire to travel, send photos of the bottle opener from various landmarks worldwide.

This busy little café is one of the oldest in Hue. On a busy corner by the side of the river, it specializes in just one dish: banh khoai, crispy pancakes stuffed with bean sprouts, shrimp, and little mounds of pork, served up with herbaceous side salads and a spicy peanut sauce. To eat, cut them in half, wrap them in herbs and rice paper, and dip. The shady seats on the sidewalk are perfectly positioned for watching life go by.

In the Japanese Quarter, beside the river, is this classic Vietnamese restaurant resembling an upscale residence with its ornate armoires, wooden chairs, and a lantern-lit courtyard where you can listen to soft jazz. Lighter menu items such as baguettes, spring rolls, and salads are offered alongside duck or prawn curry, tofu, rice platters, and seafood dishes. Take note of the antique bar, once a "rice safe" used by families to protect their harvest.

Miss Ly was one of the first cooks in town to open her humble, market-edge restaurant to the trickle of travelers astute enough to have put Hoi An on their itinerary almost 20 years ago. Two decades later, Ly is still in the kitchen pouring her heart and soul into each dish served. Her Hoi An wontons, crispy rice-flour shells with a pocket of minced pork and shrimp, dressed with a fruity, Chinese-style sweet-and-sour salsa, are some of the best in town.

Hai, from Hai’s Eco Conservation Tour, runs this bamboo restaurant with his family and serves delicious dishes every day from 7 am until 10:30 pm. Try the fresh fruit smoothies. You can also take part in a morning cooking class that includes a visit to the local market.

No visit to Hue is complete without sampling the city's most famous breakfast dish, bun bo Hue, a glorious lemongrass-and-chili infused beef broth, served with slippery round noodles, beef, pork shank, and a fistful of fragrant herbs. It's not unlike fiery northern pho, and is best slurped from specialty kitchens; the best in Hue is Quan Cam, a tiny family-run noodle shop on Le Loi Street.

Street youth are given the opportunity to refine their hospitality skills during an 18-month training program here through the nonprofit organization STREETS International, which employs orphaned and disadvantaged Vietnamese teens, many of whom go on to work at five-star restaurants and hotels. The restaurant café lives up to the highest standards of contemporary Vietnamese and international cuisine.

This vegetarian food stall is located right on the edge of Hue's Night Pedestrian Zone. This is the cheapest food stall in town with tasty plant-based dishes starting from 10,000d. It's overcrowded during full moon and new moon days (on the 14th, the 15th, the last and first day of each lunar month) when most of the Buddhist local people have vegetarian meals for religious purpose.

This open-air restaurant makes a splendid flounder (or whatever whitefish happens to be fresh that day) cooked in banana leaves, as well as a refreshing squid salad prepared with lemon, onion, peanuts, and cucumber. The view of the lantern-lit street and the Thu Bon River a couple of meters away add to its authentic Vietnamese vibe.

This peaceful restaurant serves seafood and local specialties such as "white roses," the delicious shrimp dumpling that resembles a rose. Chinese lanterns and lacquered chairs decorate the place, which caters primarily to tourists. Vinh Hung offers Central Coast Vietnamese and Western cuisines.