Typical sidewalk restaurant in Hanoi
Travel in Asia is all about the food. At least it has been for us. And nowhere have we found ourselves so overwhelmed with dining options than in Hanoi, Vietnam. It’s hard to take a step in the city’s old quarter without passing someone cooking up something wonderful. Deciding from which of the many food shacks, sidewalk stalls, and sit-down restaurants to sample is the hardest choice we typically faced on any given day.
Making matters worse, restaurant review sites like Tripadvisor and Yelp aren’t terribly helpful here. We’ve always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with those sites anyway. But in Asia they have the added challenge that many of the best eateries don’t have western names, or even any names at all.
You won’t find a review on Tripadvisor for the lady spooning up Pho Ga from some random alley because there really isn’t any way to add her to the site. What you will find instead are reviews for a bunch of larger establishments with identifiable names and addresses. They may not serve the best food, but they are popular among the westerners who use Tripadvisor.
Because of that dynamic we spent a lot of time trolling through alternative sources of information like blogs, travel articles, and local recommendations to find the best places to eat in Hanoi. We don’t offer this as a definitive list, but these are the best places we sampled during our week-long Hanoi food odyssey.
Everywhere Once 