Good Morning Vietnam, Hoi An, Italian Restaurant

May 14, 2024May 14, 2024Italian, Restaurant

If you are looking for Italian food in Hoi An Old Town, then you can certainly do a lot worse than Good Morning Vietnam. There aren’t too many dedicated Italian restaurants in the Old Town at the time of writing, and while there are certainly the odd one or two, and a few others that offer Italian food on their menus, Good Morning Vietnam is the best bang for your buck place that you will find. This has been my go-to Italian restaurant for many years as the quality is high and the prices very reasonable.

There are two floors to choose from here. Downstairs is the most popular by far as it seems 90% of the interior design effort went into it, and it is often quite busy. I would certainly recommend booking if it is in high season. The front of the restaurant is open to the street, which makes it very inviting from the outside, but means it can also get a little warm in the summer, but inside it has a very cosy feel to it. The walls are painted the ubiquitous Hoi An yellow and adorned with photos, which kind of makes it feel like you’re in someone’s home.

If downstairs is full, or maybe too hot, then you can venture upstairs. Most people never get this far and it often fills up only when the downstairs is full. I can kind of understand this, as although they have more room and bigger tables upstairs, which is perfect for larger groups, it does lack the charm of downstairs somewhat. It just feels a little like an afterthought. As we have been there many times though, we usually head straight upstairs as it tends to be quieter.

The Food

As I said earlier, I have been here many times over the years, and have tried many things on the menu. I have also ordered their pizza for delivery many times. Unfortunately, as is my way, I always forget to take photos so I do not have as many as I would like. The best place to start, I think, is the pizza. Good Morning Vietnam offers both medium and large pizzas with thin crust and a wide variety of toppings. The medium is more than enough for one person, and the large perfect to be shared. If you like a pizza with a thin base and traditional crispy crust then this will probably be the best pizza you will have in Hoi An. When I am in the mood for a light crispy crust, I always buy from here. It is the easy winner. I have tried many of the toppings and have not found a bad one yet, so am very happy to recommend the pizza to anyone.

While the price for a pizza is obviously going to be more expensive than your local Vietnamese food (and I have heard people complain about this), the high quality ingredients used here make the pizzas very good value for money and worth every penny.

I actually don’t order pizza often when I dine-in anymore as I order it regularly for delivery, so I will usually order something from the pasta menu. But before I even get that far, we always order the caprese salad and the garlic bread. The caprese salad is simply a large hunk of fresh mozzarella cheese with slices of fresh tomato, drizzled in olive oil and balsamic vinegar and topped with Italian herbs. It is wonderfully light and fresh. Well it would be if we didn’t always eat it with the garlic bread. The garlic bread comes looking like an enormously puffed up calzone. A ball of wonderfully hot and soft bread filled with air. Along with the caprese salad and a plate of the complimentary olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dip it in, this is a fantastic way to start any meal.

I have tried many of the pasta dishes at Good Morning Vietnam, and the pasta is usually well cooked, although it can be a little on the soft side sometimes but never enough to deter me from enjoying any of the dishes. The lasagne is well sized and tasty, although possibly not as tasty as the one in Morning Glory Signature in my view. Having said that, it is certainly bigger and the garlic bread here is much better, and as I enjoy eating lasagne with garlic bread, the overall experience is tied. The ravioli is good also, although I have to say I prefer the pumpkin ravioli to the meat one, and as a man who likes his meat, this is no easy thing to say. The pumpkin ravioli is incredibly tasty, although it may not be enough to fill you up if you haven’t ordered the caprese salad and garlic bread like me. A couple of honourable mentions would go to the salmon tagliatelle and the tagliatelle Bolognese, as these are both very good and well sized for a main course for anyone. The only dish that I have been a little disappointed with, is the gnocchi gorgonzola. I love gnocchi and I love blue cheese, but I found this one to be a little sharp for my taste, like the cheap blue cheese you buy in the supermarket. I have only had it once so maybe it was just a bad blue cheese day and if you like very sharp blue cheese, then this might be just the dish for you.

Overall then, it is certainly worth paying Good Morning Vietnam a visit, as it is lovely place to sit and eat and the food is high quality and very reasonably priced. While I haven’t tried the non pasta menu, I have seen someone get the steak and that looks very good too. It is a solid Italian restaurant in Hoi An and worth a visit if you are looking for some Italian food.

The Drinks

While the bar here is stocked with a wide variety of spirits and they have beers like Huda available at a reasonable price, this is an Italian restaurant, so all I really care about is the wine. They have quite an extensive wine menu at very good prices, but they also offer house Italian wines by the glass and by the carafe as well as the bottle at a very good price indeed. This is great if you don’t want to slug through a bottle and just want a few glasses to go with your meal. I believe they offer two different house variations, and while both are not bad quality, it is probably worth paying just a little extra for the more expensive one. It is still cheap, but tastes a lot better. Both the reds are fine though and will go well with the food. I haven’t tasted the white so I won’t comment.

As you can probably tell, I have been to Good Morning Vietnam many times and ordered delivery even more frequently than that. If ever there was something to look for in a recommendation, that is probably all you need to know.

Directions

The Sea Shell by Nu Eatery, Hoi An

February 27, 2023February 28, 2023Restaurant, Vietnamese, Western

The term “hidden gem” is often overused in travel books and blogs and restaurant guides, but if ever there were a restaurant that deserved to be called it, it is the Sea Shell by Nu Eatery. Situated in a small alley off the street that is accessed by crossing the Japanese covered bridge, you would be forgiven for thinking that this small restaurant would never be found. The street over the bridge seems to get significantly less footfall than the roads before the bridge, and yet this well-hidden two-storey house-restaurant always seems to be packed to the rafters.

The first time we tried to eat here, we failed, simply because there was a queue of people waiting to get inside. Even when we finally did get a table on a subsequent visit, it was still very busy. I can only presume it is in a guidebook somewhere, because I can’t imagine it could be this popular through random passers-by alone. But once you know about it, you need to go, because you will be well rewarded.

The restaurant was, I’m guessing, once a small two-storey house that has been converted into a restaurant. Downstairs is an open-plan kitchen that you walk past to go to the toilet, and a small room with several tables. Upstairs I guess there are more tables, but we didn’t get to see it as they were so busy.

We ate downstairs, and it was a lovely intimate experience, with almost the feeling like you are eating in someone’s house, but without the raging anxiety that imposing on someone else would bring with it. It is a nice spot, but in this case, it is not the ambience that makes this restaurant stand out–it is the food.

The Drinks

Before we can get to the food, though, I have to discuss the drinks. Not just because it is the usual format that I write these reviews with, although to be fair I AM a stickler for routine, but also because the drinks are noteworthy in their own right. Why are they noteworthy? Well, mostly because they have glasses of decent red wine from 90,000 VND. The 90,000 VND glass is a merlot, but I didn’t try that because for a piffling 5,000 VND extra I could get a rather tasty glass of Cabernet Sauvignon-Carmenere. So why wouldn’t I get one? Well actually I didn’t, because I ended up getting two.

The Larue was only 30,000 VND, but I wasn’t going to get that when the wine was only 95,000 VND, and I still stand by my decision.

The Food

This is where The Sea Shell by Nu Eatery really shines. I’m not entirely sure how I should characterise this restaurant, but if I had to, I would say that it is like Vietnamese-inspired Tapas. That’s really the feeling I got when we were ordering. It is not a huge menu, but diverse enough to keep things interesting. We ordered several things and they mostly came one after each other like they were different courses. Luckily, most of the things come in sets of two so you can share and don’t have to fight over them.

The first thing we ordered was the pork belly steamed buns, as Phuong had heard they were good. She wasn’t wrong. The flavours in these things are phenomenal. I think one day I will go back and just order a portion of each of their steamed buns (they have 4) because they are so good. In fact, while we were there, the table behind us did just that: They ordered a table full of steamed buns. And it looked glorious.

The bun itself is so light and is a wonderful contrast to the flavoursome meaty goodness of the filling. This was a very good start to the meal. And only 40,000 VND. What a bargain.

A single steamed bun. There should be two, but, you know…

The next things we ordered were two soft taco dishes. We got one portion of the barbecue pork taco with wasabi dressing, and one portion of the turmeric white fish with white noodle taco. Again there were two of each so we each got to try one. These didn’t disappoint and were a strong follow-up to the steamed buns. I still can’t decide which I liked best, as they were both delicious. Part of me wants to say the fish because the batter was so light and crispy and they just look amazing. But who doesn’t like barbecue pulled pork tacos? Let’s just call it a draw.

Both of the tacos were a measly 60,000 VND each, so not too taxing on the budget so far.

The next dish we ordered was a plate of garlic baguette toasts topped with chili lime shrimp, followed by an avocado and prawn salad. Both were wonderful dishes to share. Very fresh and tangy and tasty. The salad was good as salads go, but salads never really get my socks popping, so I have to admit I kind of wished I had ordered more tacos. I couldn’t stop thinking about them. I realised I started to miss the fish more than the pork, so I guess that won the duel after all. The prawn garlic toasts were good though, and could stand on their own with any dish.

That said, next time I go, the steamed buns and tacos will be the only nailed on certainties to my order. After all, I have to give room to try something else. The garlic toast with pork meatballs for example. I still for the life of me can’t figure out why I didn’t order that the first time. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly wouldn’t be disappointed to eat exactly the same dishes again next time. They were all very tasty indeed. I would just feel like I was missing out on some other great possibilities. This is the problem.

Overall, then, apart from being extremely high-quality food with exceptional flavours and textures, the main joy, for me, of eating at the Sea Shell by Nu Eatery is being able to try so many different dishes and share them, even if there is only two of you. You don’t need a big group to get many different flavours. The dishes are small enough and cheap enough to allow you to fill your table with a multitude of different dishes and still have enough money left for wine.

And enough room in your belly for dessert.

Yup, of course we did. Why wouldn’t we?

We ordered a cheesecake and a cinnamon roll. The cheesecake was fantastic, and although the cinnamon pastry was wonderfully cinnamon-y, the white sauce over the top was a touch too sweet for me. That said, we still finished them both completely. They were a lovely end to a quite wonderful array of courses.

All-in-all, the total bill came to around 900,000 VND or so, for two people with wine. Of course, it’s not all about the cost, but the cost being low for each dish does make it easier to just order many things to try. Trust me, there are a lot of things that you are going to want to try, and being able to order them one after the other like tapas is fantastic. The hardest part is deciding what things you are NOT going to try.

The Sea Shell by Nu Eatery is a wonderful place to eat, and if you like trying different things, and you like the idea of Vietnamese inspired tapas, then you will absolutely love this place.

I will be back for sure. For that table-full of steamed buns if for nothing else.

Directions

The Hoianian Wine Bar & Restaurant, Hoi An

February 27, 2023April 17, 2023Bar, Restaurant, Vietnamese, Western

When the weather is fine, the Hoianian bar is one of the best spots in town to sit outside and watch the world go by. It is a lovely little place with two floors, a balcony terrace upstairs overlooking the street, and tables outside lining the side street along the length of the building. It is right in the centre of old town and next to the river, so it gets a lot of people passing by in the daytime and the evening. If you are a people-watcher, like me, then there aren’t many places better. This is what you might call prime-people-watching real estate.

Sitting outside people watching is a tiring job

Outside is where I like to sit when it is sunny, but if the weather is not so good, or you are in a larger group then you can sit inside. Downstairs is a cool place to relax, with a bit of a bohemian feel, with sofas and chairs, but also some tables to eat at. There are more tables upstairs, which can also cater for larger groups, although I would suggest booking if you want a group table in the evening as it gets quite busy.

The Drinks

This is a wine bar as well as a restaurant, and drinking outside in the sun is the reason I mostly go here. Another reason, which goes together well with the first reason, is happy hour. The happy hour at the Hoianian is a rather generous seven hours, from 12:00 pm to 7pm. Most bars and restaurants in Old Town offer happy hours like buy one get one free, but most bars and restaurants seem to limit their offers to cocktails. Since I am not much of a cocktail drinker, they don’t hold much appeal to me, but the Hoianian sits much more comfortably within my wheelhouse–with a happy hour also featuring wine and local beer. Now, that’s a happy hour I can get behind, and one which does the name proud. The good thing is, the prices aren’t overly expensive anyway. A bottle of Larue at full price is 39,000 VND, so the buy-one-get-one-free offer is a no-brainer. Glasses of wine at full price range from around 140,000 VND for several South American options, so with buy-one-get-one-free, you are looking at around 70,000 VND, which is not too bad at all. I haven’t tried the white yet, but the reds that I have tasted were surprisingly good for happy hour fare.

A tiny downside to sitting outside the Hoianian is the service. It can be a little hit and miss. When it is very busy, it is usually ok, with staff coming outside to check on customers fairly regularly, but on days when it is not so busy, it can sometimes be a while before staff venture outside, and so you might have to go indoors to place your next order. This is certainly not a deal-breaker for me, though, and is a small price to pay for an outside table.

A couple of other minor things that irk me a little, but not enough to stop me going, are the WIFI, which tends to be a little hit and miss and not always very fast, the backs of the outside chairs are a little uncomfortable, and they don’t always open the outside seating area until later in the evening. I suspect this is due to staff limitations when it is not busy, but it can be rather disappointing when you want a mid-week al fresco beer before it gets dark.

If the weather is nice, then, and I can get a table outside during happy hour, The Hoianian becomes one of my favourite bars in Hoi An. It is just a great spot to sit and soak up the sun and the Hoi An atmosphere, and with the great happy hour prices, there is just nothing not to like. Well maybe the service and the WIFI.

The Food

As of yet, I haven’t managed to eat at the Hoianian. It is on my list of restaurants to visit, but for now I can only comment on the Hoianian as a winebar. I will update this section as soon as I can.

Morning Glory Signature Restaurant, Hoi An

February 27, 2023February 27, 2023Restaurant, Chinese, Italian, Seafood, vegan, Vietnamese

Morning Glory Signature on An Hoi island in Hoi An is one of my favourite restaurants in Hoi An. I am not saying it’s the best, mainly because I’m not a professional food critic, and I believe food will always be subjective, but it is definitely one of my personal favourites. Unlike the original Morning Glory in Old Town that serves up wonderful traditional Hoi An and Vietnamese food, Morning Glory Signature caters to a more eclectic palate with its diverse menu and fusion-focused Vietnamese dishes.

The way it does this, is not simply by offering a wide menu, which it does, but by being so cavernously huge. This place is several restaurants in one, with multiple places to sit and drink and eat. The main Morning Glory Signature restaurant is upstairs and has a wonderfully large balcony overlooking the street below. It is a fantastic place for people watching, but fills up very quickly, so is often best to book if you know you want to be sitting there.

Morning glory signature hoi an balcony area

Morning Glory Signature Hoi An busy balcony

But apart from the eponymous Signature restaurant, there is also a vegan restaurant, Vy’s deli, and a Cafe selling Chinese dumplings. These are all nice places to sit (although not as nice as the balcony area, it has to be said) and all well covered by a fast-moving and efficient service staff.

The real beauty of this place, is that although there are several restaurants and menus to choose from, you don’t have to be sitting in the correct place to see each menu. In other words, you can be sitting in Morning Glory Signature and still order from the menu of Vy’s Deli, or the Vegan place. This opens up a world of possibilities, giving you the choice of everything from Vietnamese, Chinese, to Italian; from steak to seafood, to beef stew, and it means that each member of a party can order from a different menu and get a completely different style of food. It is not often that you get such a variety of different foods served in the same place with such a high level of quality.

This is the main reason it is one of my favourite restaurants in Hoi An. Of course, having so many options can get a little confusing, and sometimes finding what you want might be a little testing, but if you do find yourself getting frustrated looking through the menus, just ask the staff for the ipad, they will happily give it to you. And the ipad has pictures of all the dishes too. A much better way to peruse the menus, especially if you are a visual eater.

The Drinks

As you might expect, a place of this quality comes with a well-stocked menu of drinks to choose from. You will find everything you want here, from soft drinks, to beer, to spirits, to, of course, wine. This is the kind of place I like to drink wine in, and they have a lot of choice available. The better news is, that it is not as expensive as you might expect. In fact, a glass of red or white starts at around 120,000 VND, and there are several choices around this price point. This is certainly not as expensive as you see in other restaurants of this quality, and yet another reason why I keep coming back here.

The Food

As I have already stated, one of the positive points about Morning Glory Signature is how much choice you get from being able to choose separately from all of the different menus that they have on offer. Another positive point is just the sheer quality and taste of the food that comes. And I mean everything. Be it Vietnamese food, Chinese dumplings, or Italian food, the quality is high and the flavours immense.

The first time I came here was when my family was visiting from the UK. We went in as a large group and got seated on the balcony. This would be almost impossible now without a reservation, but Hoi An was still opening up after Covid at that time, and so the tourist numbers were lower. We ordered pretty much everything from their Vietnamese fusion menu and put everything out on the table to share as a group. This, in my view, is the best way to eat Asian food if you are in a group as you get to taste so many different things. And the tastes present in the dishes here are phenomenal. The standout for me is the crispy pork in tamarind sauce, but they are all so wonderful and varied. Each dish offers a completely different flavour profile to the next, so it gives your palate a good work out, in a very good way. These dishes are not your run-of-the-mill Hoi An dishes that you find in every other cafe and restaurant in Old Town, these dishes are special.

The next time we went to Morning Glory Signature, there was just me and Phuong. As expected we could not get a table on the balcony, so we settled for a table inside. This time we both fancied something different, though. Phuong had her mind set on dim sum, while I fancied a lasagna. Luckily we were in Morning Glory Signature, where all things are possible. We ordered a few different dishes of Chinese dumplings, a Greek salad with avocado, and I had my beef lasagna with garlic bread. A couple of glasses of Shiraz were in order to help wash the whole thing down.

As you can probably tell, I find it difficult to remember to take photos before I start eating.

The standout of the dumplings were the chicken and ginger dumplings. These were a taste sensation. If you like ginger, then you will love these. They were simply delicious with quite the ginger spice hit, and my only regret, was that there were only 5 of them. I know for a fact that I will be ordering these every time I come here, regardless of my other orders. Phuong liked one of the other dumplings more as I think the ginger was a little too strong for her, so bear that in mind. To be fair, though, they were all very good, and extremely flavour-diverse.

My lasagna was also unexpectedly excellent. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t expecting it to be so good. Probably because their Asian food is so strong, that I thought they must have a weakness somewhere, and that weakness would probably be the lasagna. It wasn’t. When it first came, I have to admit, I thought it might be a little small, but by the end of it, and with everything else we had to eat, I had eaten more than enough. And it was delicious. They nailed the flavours that I love in lasagna, but also got the texture of both pasta and meat spot on. It is now, for me at least, probably the best lasagna I have had in Hoi An. I would even put it above the lasagna in Good Morning Vietnam

The prices aren’t bad either. For this standard of food, in a setting so nice, you would expect to be paying a premium, but it’s really not that expensive. For a rough benchmark, my lasagna was 155,000 VND. I don’t think anyone could complain about paying about $6.50 USD for the “best” lasagna in Hoi An.

To the time of writing this, then, I still haven’t had a dish in Morning Glory Signature that i did not like, or that I thought was disappointing. The quality is superb. The choice is phenomenal. And it is still probably my favourite restaurant in Hoi An. Now, as I said earlier, taste is subjective, so you might not like it as much as I do, but you should still go try and see for yourself. At least once. And have the chicken with ginger dumplings.

Hai Cafe

February 21, 2023February 22, 2023Restaurant, Barbecue

I’m ashamed to admit that I went to this restaurant on the recommendation of a guest. That should, after all, be my job. They had just returned and were raving about the flavours and were surprised that we hadn’t been there. So was I. We soon remedied that, and at the next opportune moment we went to Hai Cafe for dinner.

Firstly, the name Cafe is a little bit of an understatement. I had images of a small coffee shop with five or six tables and three staff. I was wrong. To be fair I should have known better, this is Vietnam after all. Hai Cafe is actually three cafes/restaurants in one. There is an entrance to it from the two parallel roads, and you would be forgiven for thinking it was two different places if you never walked all the way through. If you enter the cafe from the side nearest the river, you enter into the more coffee shop-like area. This is a nice area and I would have happily sat here for dinner as there are plenty of tables and it is has a light open feel.

Luckily, we carried on walking through the restaurant just to see what else there was. The next room, although part of the restaurant, feels a bit more like a Chinese art gallery or temple than a place for eating. There are tables, but I would imagine that these would be the last to be filled.

The place to be, though, in my humble opinion, is through the next door, and the part that can be accessed from the far road–the courtyard. As son as I walked into the open area of the courtyard I knew I had found the place I wanted to have dinner. It is a quite wonderful little open air courtyard with lots of plants and nice lighting. It gave me a kind of Mediterranean feel, which I always like. Of, course it would not be the best place to be if it were raining, but when the weather is kind, it is a lovely place to sit. I already told my mom that I will bring her here when she comes next.

The Drinks

The drinks menu is standard fare for most restaurants in Old Town and follows roughly the same pricing structure, i.e. 40,000 for a Larue beer. Two things stood out for me though as I was looking at their drinks list. 1. They have an extensive wine list. The list is quite impressive, although a little bit on the expensive side. The only thing I didn’t like about the wine list, was that the only red that they had on the menu that you could buy by the glass, was a Pinot Noir, and it’s not my favourite. Especially at 150,000 VND per glass. They might have had more if I had asked, but I didn’t because I noticed the second thing: 2. They have gin for 55,000 VND. Sure, it’s for the Gordon’s, but as the tonic is probably going to be Schweppes anyway, I am perfectly happy with a Gordon’s gin and tonic, especially at that price. It was pretty good too.

The Food

As this is a barbecue restaurant, the food, of course, is the most important thing. It really is a barbecue as well. Not one of these pretend barbecues, where they go and grill your food in the kitchen, the food is cooked out in the open, in the courtyard itself. Like a barbecue. You can literally see your food being barbecued by the staff.

As this is a barbecue restaurant, with the food being cooked on an outside barbecue, the menu follows suit and offers a range of barbecued meat dishes. The hard part is choosing what to order. We ordered the mixed meat skewers, pork ribs, and pork belly fried rice. Each of the meat dishes comes with a choice of side dish and we opted for the noodle salad with the skewers, and the vegetable kebab with the ribs. We weren’t sure whether we really needed the fried rice or not, but we went for it anyway. And I’m glad we did. Firstly, the dishes themselves aren’t that big, so I think two dishes is not really enough for two hungry people. And secondly the pork fried rice was delicious. I think I can now class it as the best fried rice I have had in Vietnam so far. I am not always a fan of the way they make fried rice in Vietnam, as they like to crisp the rice in the bottom of the pan, but this wasn’t like that at all. To be fair, though, it wasn’t the rice that made this so good. It was the pork belly. Whatever rub they use on the pork is out of this world. The flavours were just fantastic, and I would be happy to go back just for those tastes again.

This seems to be ongoing theme in Hai cafe: The meats themselves are good, but nothing out of the ordinary. They are barbecued meats. But whatever rubs, marinades, sauces and dips they use are simply divine and are anything BUT ordinary. It is the flavours that would make me recommend this place to guests every time, and I mostly certainly will. Maybe not to vegetarians, but if someone likes their meat, and they like it bursting with flavour, then this is the place I will send them. Even if you could not see them cook the food on the barbecue, you would know it had been barbecued. You can literally taste the barbecue, and I don’t mean that in an Uncle Bob’s charcoal nugget kind of way. If you like barbecued food, then you will love this place.

It is not a cheap place, though, that has to be said, and if you are hungry and like wine you will burn through a fair amount of money. Our bill for the three dishes, a gin and tonic, a margarita, and two beers came to about 900,000 VND, so it’s certainly not cheap. But I have to say, if you can afford it, it’s worth it, especially if you like meat. And even more so if you like barbecued meat, as it’s difficult to find a place that does it this well.

I will certainly be back, and I already have my eye on the beef brisket. With a side order of pork belly fried rice of course.