Sacha

Hello!
I would really appreciate, if anyone could tell me anout great places to eat!
My boyfriend and I are soon going to Vietnam for 5 and a half weeks and through my research I found a lot of places that sounds really nice in the guidebooks but I would much rather hear about great experiences from "the real people"...
The cities we are planning to visit are:
- Hanoi
- Sapa/ Bac Ha
- Halong/ Cat Ba Island
- Hue
- Hoi An
- Nha Trang
- Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

Thanks!

Lyndie

Little Hanoi in old quarter serves fresh light cafe food with a vietnamese flavour-we ate there several times-great beer too. Cafe du Lac near Hoan Kiem Lake is great for lunch.
In Hoi An there is a little seafood restaurant on stilts close to Hoi An Riverside resort-amazing prawns in tamarind & garlic for $3US. Also Brothers cafe in Hoi An is a little expensive US$8-10 per dish however a table on the river is about as good as it gets! Ask your hotel to recommend places for local food or special occasion places. Food was fabulous in July-we enjoyed Vietnam so much we arte returning in Dec for 2 weeks! Have a great time!

Ben

In Hue, there is a small non-descript restaurant that is advertised in the Lonely Planet Vietnam guidebook and on a sign that is (or was) out front as "Should be in the Lonely Planet Guidebook". I don't remember the name, but it is on the street with all of the tourist cafes and hotels, a couple of blocks from the river. Great food (best chicken soup in the world) for about $1 or $2 per meal.

maryanne1

Saigon Restaurants
Lemongrass-Vietnamese food
Chateau
Top of Rex Hotel if only for a drink
Top of Majestic hotel-our favorite for ice cream
Ba Mien-good Vietnamese food
Tib
Hanoi
Indochine
Handspan Cafe good pizza
Good restaurant in Hotel De Syloia
Hoi An
Mermaid Cafe
Hue
Century Hotel
Huong Giang

anna_k

Here are some excerpts from my Vietnam trip journal, we were there in January 2003.

Hanoi
For lunch we went to a really fancy place called Brothers. The atmosphere was relaxing and they had beautiful arrangements of roses all around. The lunch buffet was $5 which is expensive for Hanoi, but we really enjoyed it.

We had a great dinner at the Emperor Restaurant, we each had a set menu for $14.50 each, the food was delicious and the atmosphere great. The
restaurant was beautifully decorated, the service was excellent.

Hoi An
Cafe Les Amis along the riverside.
The owner, Mr Kim was a former chef in the Vietnamese Army for the generals. He stayed in Vietnam after the war to take care of his ancestors graves, while his 15 brothers and sister went to the US. He went to the "re-education" camps after the war and was very poor until they allowed free enterprise and he could open his restaurant. There is no menu, but don't let this scare you away. We had four or five courses each night that were delicious. We ate there the 3 nights we were in Hoi An, we had a different "menu" each night. Just order the seafood, meat, or vegetarian menu and you get lots of stuff. The US ambassador to Vietnam wrote that it was the best food he has had in Vietnam - so did most everyone else. Can't beat the price with a bamboo stick - 3 beers and a menu - 215,000 dong(about $24USD) for 3 people.

Saigon
Mandarin - run by the same people as the Emperor in Hanoi. Another excellent restaurant, delicious food, one of the best meals of our trip to Vietnam (and we had a lot of good meals!). We ordered several entrees and shared rather than do the tasting menu.

Lemongrass - we ate dinner here too. The meal was very good but not as good as Emperor.