10 must-visit restaurants from Vietnam’s first-ever Michelin Guide

Vietnam’s first Michelin Guide has 103 venues in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Here are 10 of our favourites, from street snails to teppanyaki.

Vietnam celebrated a historic milestone in 2023 with the reveal of the country’s first-ever Michelin Guide, spotlighting 103 venues from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. We took one for the team, eating around these major (and majorly delicious) cities to whittle down the list to our 10 favourites. From the four starred fine-diners to plastic stool-seating street snails, here’s our guide to the best restaurants in the inaugural Michelin Guide Vietnam.

This summer, Vietnam’s dining world convened at The One in Hanoi for the unveiling of the first-ever Michelin Guide in Vietnam. Attended by the nation’s top chefs and restaurateurs as well as Michelin executives, the event recognised 103 restaurants and street vendors in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (also known, of course, as Saigon). 

Among these were 70 Michelin Selected restaurants, which meet the standard for recognition in the Guide; 29 Michelin Bib Gourmands, which are recognised for offering quality food at reasonable prices; and finally, four coveted Michelin stars, conferring the honour of the highest level of excellence. Representing more than 20 different national and regional cuisines—from French and Cantonese to Vietnamese fine dining and street food—all categories are anonymously evaluated by independent inspectors. 

With so much to explore in this historic inaugural little red book, we thought we’d help you comb through all the deliciousness, and highlight some of our favourite restaurants and vendors included in the list. From a vintage teahouse serving Hanoian classics to a beloved snail vendor and the Saigonese pioneer of modern “new Vietnamese cuisine,” here is our guide to the first Michelin Guide Vietnam. 

Hanoi

Tam Vi 
One star

Traditional Northern Vietnamese cuisine is the focus of this Michelin star restaurant, set in a gorgeous vintage tea house on Yen The Street in Hanoi’s buzzy Dong Da District. Decorated with a nostalgic collection of Chinese furniture and hand-written signs, the restaurant is run by Nguyen Bao Anh and her mother, Tam, who sought to create a restaurant where guests felt like they were enjoying a simple, home-cooked meal. Standouts from the menu include Vietnamese ham with periwinkle snails (cha oc), which comes with fresh herbs, vegetables and rice vermicelli with fish sauce, as well as a sour tamarind crab soup with malabar spinach. 

You can find more information at Tam Vi. 

Gia 
One star

Gia was the winningest restaurant at the Michelin Vietnam ceremony, not only taking home one of the four coveted Michelin stars, but also receiving the Michelin Young Chef Award for 33-year-old, Australia-trained Sam Tran, in recognition of her extreme talent and potential. Opened in December 2020 on Van Mieu Street in Dong Da District, the tasting-menu restaurant spotlights a loosely East-meets-West ethos, applying Vietnamese ingredients through western wood-fired cooking techniques.

Tran’s menu changes seasonally, emphasising the Vietnamese culinary philosophy of balancing elements—water, fire, metal, wood and earth—while also focusing on sustainable ingredient sourcing. While the restaurant is outfitted with French architectural accents, its name comes from the Vietnamese word for family: gia dinh. “Through each dish at Gia, I want to tell the story of Vietnamese culture,” Tran said. 

You can find more information at Gia. 

Hibana by Koki 
One star

Set in the basement of the opulent, Bill Bensley-designed Capella Hanoi, this intimate, wood-panelled 14-seat Japanese teppanyaki counter was the sole non-Vietnamese restaurant to earn a Michelin star this year. Helmed by chef Hiroshi Yamaguchi, who was mentored by Japanese teppanyaki master Yoshida Junichi, Hibana imports fresh ingredients like abalone, spiny lobster, sea urchin, Yaeyama Kyori beef and Hokkaido hairy crab twice-weekly from Japan. In traditional teppanyaki fashion, these premium ingredients are grilled (yaki) via a metal plate or griddle (teppan). 

You can find more information at Hibana by Koki. 

T.U.N.G. Dining 

Opened in 2018 on the border of Hanoi’s Old Quarter and French Quarter neighbourhoods, the name of this 33-seat restaurant has a double meaning. It’s partly named after chef-owner Hoang Tung—who cut his chops at various Michelin-star restaurants in Scandinavia—but T.U.N.G. is also an acronym for “twisted, unique, natural, and gastronomique.” One of Hanoi’s most lauded conceptual dining restaurants, it has a boundary-defying take on Vietnamese cuisine, presented through a multi-course tasting menu that can go up to 20 dishes. 

The menu eschews western ingredients like butter and cream, choosing to flavour food with Vietnamese-style ingredients like fermented juice, yogurt, and even gin. Notable on the menu is a molecular interpretation of pho that sets slices of Wagyu and herb in a gelatinous sheet of aspic. But even its most straightforward dishes—like steamed rice and corn—come in thoughtful presentations and preparations.

The team behind T.U.N.G. also operate A by TUNG in Saigon, and Kuusi by TUNG, a cocktail bar in Hanoi. You can find more information at T.U.N.G. Dining 

Cha Ca Thang Long 

Newcomers seeking Hanoi’s famed cha ca (grilled catfish with turmeric) may be confused by the three restaurants with the same name, on the same street, run by the same family. However, it was the location at 6B Duong Thanh Street that earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand for its take on the northern specialty, which features the fish cooked tableside in a saucepan with onions and generous amounts of dill. Housed in a century-old yellow townhouse with Chinese signage, the restaurant serves its fish with accouterments like vermicelli rice noodles, Vietnamese coriander, and a pungent shrimp paste for dipping. Peanuts add a necessary element of crunch. 

You can find more information at Cha Ca Thang Long.

Ho Chi Minh City

Anan
One star

The sole Michelin-star recipient in Saigon, Anan is best known as the pioneer of “new Vietnamese cuisine,” a term coined by its Yale-educated chef Peter Cuong Franklin—a one-time war refugee and adoptee who returned to Vietnam after earning acclaim at Hong Kong’s Chom Chom. Anan also currently sits at No. 40 on the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list.

Set in a narrow five-story “tube house,” the restaurant can be experienced through both its excellent chef’s tasting menu—featuring such innovative creations as a one-bite bun cha—as well as an a la carte menu of favorites that range from crab fried rice and bone marrow to a Wagyu pho and banh xeo, or sizzling Vietnamese crepes, rejiggered as hand-held tacos. After dinner, head up to the on-site bar, Nhau Nhau, for thoughtful cocktails like a Vietnamese espresso martini and a “phojito,” reimagining the mojito with pho spices. Fun fact: Anan translates to “eat eat” while Nhau Nhau translates to “drink drink.” 

You can find more information at Anan. 

Esta

Helmed by central Vietnamese-born chef Francis Thuan, Esta is a cozy, 35-seat fine dining restaurant that was named a Michelin Select restaurant. The regularly rotating menu spotlights Vietnamese flavour principles and global ingredients through wood-fired cooking among other French culinary techniques. In the dimly lit restaurant that opened in 2019, diners are treated to dinner with a show thanks to the open kitchen, in which Esta chefs prepare and prep ingredients like dry-aged duck, Korean turbot, and Tasmanian lamb—as well as local, seasonal fruits and vegetables like rock melon and Myoga flower buds. 

You can find more information at Esta. 

Dim Tu Tac

Cantonese food has always been prevalent in Vietnam, especially in Saigon, which boasts a sizeable Chinese diaspora. Founded in 2015, Dim Tu Tac—which translates to “anything is possible”—is a homegrown chain for contemporary Cantonese cuisine, particularly dim sum. While there are four locations, it was the bustling Dong Du outpost, which seats more than 100 guests, that earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand for its execution of dim sim favourites like ha gao (steamed prawn dumplings), steamed pork rib with black bean sauce and taro, and glutinous rice with pork and chicken steamed in lotus leaf. 

You can find more information at Dim Tu Tac. 

Pho Hoa Pasteur 

Vietnam’s national dish, the noodle soup pho, was celebrated widely at the Michelin ceremony, with a whopping 14 pho restaurants featured across the Michelin Select and Bib Gourmand categories in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Among these, Saigon’s revered street stall Pho Hoa on Pasteur Street in District 3, which won a Bib Gourmand, is perhaps the locals’ favorite. Operating in the same simple digs since 1968, the restaurant serves its namesake dish with beef brisket, flank, tendon, tripe, and meatballs.

Though pho is a northern Vietnamese creation, Pho Hoa has earned a reputation as being made for southern tastes, boasting small round noodles, a rich umami-forward broth, and heaps of fresh herbs. It’s believed that this restaurant inspired countless “Pho Pasteur” and “Pho Hoa” establishments found all over the world, where Vietnamese refugees from Saigon settled and set up diasporic communities. 

Oc Dao

Snails, or oc, are central to Vietnamese drinking culture, and can often be found in a variety of preparations at seafood restaurants serving ample amounts of beer to go along with the snackable mollusk. Nestled on Nguyen Trai Street in the downtown hub of District 1, this Michelin Select restaurant offers 25+ types of snail (including some rare varieties), clams, mussels and scallops—served with the requisite dipping sauces of chili fish sauce, and salt and pepper with kumquat juice. These bivalves are cooked live according to your preference, whether that’s toasted with salt and pepper, fried with spicy butter, or grilled in satay sauce. Pull up your plastic chair in the open-air restaurant and enjoy your seafood as motorbikes whiz by. In true Saigon style.

This article first appeared on Travel+Leisure Thailand.