7 Great Restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City

Quan An Ngon features a beautiful design scheme like something out of an exotic fairytale and a range of cooking stations preparing specialities from all over Vietnam. This keeps the restaurant packed out every evening with foreigners and well-dressed locals. 

This is the perfect place to try legendary Vietnamese dishes such as fresh spring rolls, Hue noodles and black pepper crab. Occupying a prime location next door to The Reunification Palace, this restaurant is situated inside a refurbished mansion where guests can dine amid intricately carved teak furniture, lotus ponds and serving staff in classic satin dresses.

The Deck Saigon sits beside the Saigon River in a delightful alfresco setting, just a 15 minutes taxi ride from downtown Ho Chi Minh City. The romance of this restaurant is unparalleled and the pan-Asian fusion type dishes are very well prepared. 

Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, this restaurant has excellent set lunch offerings. Come dinnertime, a la carte dishes run from soft shell crab tempura to char-grilled shrimp and rib-eye steak. Most of the meat is imported meaning it isn’t the cheapest but the quality is assured.

The Refinery Bar and Restaurant brings a touch of French charm to downtown Ho Chi Minh with a menu of French bistro favourites such as steak frites and creative salads. This popular restaurant is enclosed in a fashionable courtyard next to the Park Hyatt Hotel on Hai Ba Trung Street.

As a former opium factory, The Refinery is replete with genuine colonial fixtures and has a charming garden terrace that offers the perfect spot for soaking up the cosmopolitan ambience over a couple of wines.

Tram’s Cookery Restaurant & Bar is an upscale dining spot next to the Saigon River, where you can enjoy traditional Vietnamese and western cuisine in a relaxing atmosphere. It's also a great spot just to have some drinks in tranquillity. 

The restaurant is part of the beautiful An Lam Riverside Resort and a favourite of Saigon’s ‘elite’ community and expats living in Vietnam. Either by speedboat or taxi, it will respectively take roughly 20 or 35 minutes to get there from the city centre.

Restaurant La Cuisine serves classic French cuisine in Saigon. Among its offerings are many traditional French dishes such as steak tartare, foie gras with Provence figs, and pan seared duck with Béarnaise sauce. Plating and execution is stylish and modern, just like the white-washed, bare brick walls, and chunky wooden tables. 

The owner and head chef is French and has worked all over the world before settling in Ho Chi Minh to open La Cuisine. Look out for the set lunch menu which offers 2 or 3 courses for significantly reduced rates for a taste of something fancy at a great value price.

Nha Hang Ngon is an endearingly popular restaurant serving a complete rundown of Vietnamese dishes in a restored colonial mansion. The menu is as big as a cookbook but all dishes are explained in English. 

Some might feel the restaurant lacks authenticity, but this is a great option for large groups who want to sample a wide range of Vietnamese food in pleasant surrounds. While this isn’t fine dining, the prices are such good value it is accessible for almost everyone.

4Ps Pizza Saigon is a Japanese owned and operated pizza and pasta restaurant that serves some of the best pizzas east of Napoli. It is an institution with Ho Chi Minh’s expatriate community, serving stone-baked pizzas with inventive toppings that run from flower petals to teriyaki chicken. 

Despite the somewhat hard-to-find location down an alleyway behind The Sushi Bar on Le Thanh Ton Street, it gets packed on weekends and reservations are highly recommended.