Hoi an Odyssey Hotel

Luxury Hotel and Spa

Entry-header image

Tag: vietnamese food

The Son Bistro Hoi An

Bar, Restaurant, Vietnamese

The Son Bistro Hoi An is one of my new favourite places to sit in Old Town to do work, have a beer, and watch the masses of Hoi An Tourists pass by. It is on the small street in the middle of Old Town that leads down to The Hoianian, and so, as The Hoianian is often busy outside and their WIFI sometimes too bad to work, I sit outside here instead. The street gets quite busy, especially at weekends, and so there is plenty of opportunities for good quality people-watching. It can also get quite busy here too after 5 pm so get there early if you want to guarantee a prime spot.

The Son Bistro Hoi An is a family owned place, and the husband and wife team that run it are very friendly and are often around in the evenings talking to customers. The staff here are also very friendly and the service is quick and reliable even when you are sitting outside. There is also an inside section, which is very pretty and cozy, but I have to be honest, I have never sat in there; the outside is just too nice a place to sit. They also have an aircon section upstairs if you are feeling hot after a hard day’s walking, but I have never even ventured upstairs as I don’t really like sitting in aircon too much. When the weather is nice they a have a good selection of tables to sit at outside, both high and low, so this is where I prefer to spend my time. I do prefer the regular height tables, though, as the low tables are difficult to work at with a laptop, but all give a great view of the passing throngs of people.

They also often have a couple of musicians playing music in the evening which gives the place a lovely relaxing feel and has even prompted some people to start dancing in the street on occasion. Not me, though, obviously :).

One final thing that I really like about The Son Bistro, which not everyone would look for in a review of a bar or restaurant, is their toilets. It may not be important to everyone, but it is to me. The toilets are spacious and clean and almost “inviting”, if that’s a word you can use with toilets. Obviously I wouldn’t recommend going here just to experience the toilets, and I don’t have to when it has so much else gong for it, but it’s nice to know they’re there.

The Son Bistro Hoi An busy night outside
The Son Bistro Hoi An inside sofa

The Food

As with most places I sit at, and work, and watch the world go by, I haven’t really eaten here, and so don’t have much of an opinion on the food. I did, however, eat here once, as my friend and I were both a little hungry and wanted some snacks. He went for the seafood noodles, and I went for the beef skewers. Although not the cheapest food around, the price wasn’t too bad for being in the centre of Old Town. I think the noodles were about 130,000 VND and my skewers around 110,000 VND or something like that. I can’t comment on the noodles, but my friend said they were quite good, and my skewers, while a little small, were tasty, and the sauces that accompanied them were good. I would certainly consider eating here again, even if just for something small again, as the quality was good.

The Son Bistro Hoi An Beef skewers
The Son Bistro Hoi An seafood noodles

The Drinks

The Son Bistro Hoi An has a good selection of drinks from cocktails, to wine, to draught beer, as well as a welcome selection of teas and coffees and soft drinks, and the prices aren’t too bad. There is something for everyone here, and so a good place to sit for a drink with a large party with eclectic taste.

For me, though, the beer is the real hero here. As well as some solid craft beers from the local 7-Bridges brewery, they also offer Huda on draught. Not only that, but they also offer the draught Huda as a Happy Hour special. The Happy Hour might not be the best around, as it only offers buy 2 get 1 free, but it is reasonable for draught beer, and is also generously lengthy–I believe it runs from 2pm to 7pm, although I will have to check that again.

Overall, The Son Bistro Hoi An is a place I like to spend time, and is a place I go to regularly (probably a little too regularly) and would recommend it as a welcome pitstop on your tour around Hoi An Old Town. Maybe even make it your destination for dinner. I haven’t yet, but I may well do soon.

Directions

As mentioned before, it is in a prime spot, just up from the river on Le Loi street, which has The Hoianian on the corner.

See all Bar Reviews

Miss Ly’s Restaurant, Hoi An

Uncategorized, Restaurant, Vietnamese

We went to Miss Ly’s because we had always seen how busy it was and knew it was a very popular place, especially amongst Koreans, so we just had to find out what all the fuss was about.

If you get there at peak dinner time, you can expect to find a queue of people waiting to get in as the place is fairly small inside and the demand is quite high. There are a few seats outside if the weather is fine, but not enough to ease the congestion. Inside, the place is simple but nicely decorated, finished mostly in traditional dark wood, which does tend to make the place a little dark at night, but with lighter coloured walls adorned with traditional art, it is a pleasant place to sit.

The Drinks

As it was a weeknight when we visited I couldn’t go all out and sample the drinks, but what I saw on the menu was a limited but standard menu for the smaller places in Old Town. I had a couple of Larue beers at the standard Old Town price of 40,000 VND. They do have some house wine on the menu which comes out at just under 500,000 VND per bottle for a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon or chardonnay, which isn’t bad.

The Food

The first thing I noticed, was that the menu is a little limited. I guess if you are new to Hoi An, it has all the foods that Hoi An has to offer and therefore is a perfect place to sample the traditional Hoi An staples. After living in Hoi An for several years, though, we were hoping for a little more choice. As one reviewer on Google succinctly put it: “Great option for ones who wants to try street food but not on the street”. This sums it up quite nicely. The menu comprises the traditional Hoi An foods of Cao Lau, White Rose, banh mi, and wontons, fresh starters such as spring rolls, as well as a few other simple fried rice and noodle dishes. They also have a fish in banana leaf, which I am sure is very good, but none of us fancied fish that night.

That said, we were willing to give the restaurant a chance and ordered some food. We ordered the wontons as a starter to share, followed by a banh mi, shrimp fried rice, pork fried rice, and papaya salad. I am not normally a fan of fried rice in Vietnam as they often crisp up the rice on the bottom of the pan, which I don’t particularly like, but it was the only thing I really fancied, and I like to see how different restaurants do the rice anyway.

Wontons
Papaya Salad

Fried Rice

First of all it is clear that the ingredients they use are fresh. There is good use of vegetables and salads which gives everything an overriding feeling of freshness. The wontons were tasty, they were crunchy and light and not greasy at all, and the toppings were all fresh and tangy. I must say the spring rolls on the other table also looked good, and we kind of got a little bit of food envy over those. The banh mi was good too, although I only had a single bite. I kind of feel strange ordering a bah mi in a restaurant, as I buy them so often as a take-away from other shops and street stalls. I thought the presentation for the banh mi could have been done a little more creatively as well, it looked a little bit lonely sitting on that plate on its own and still felt more like a snack than a meal.

The papaya salad was superb. Lovely fresh papaya and herb salad, with a hit of heat and spice, just as I like it. It’s not the same as a som tam in Thailand, so don’t order it expecting that, but it is still good in its own right. It is the same as you get on the side of a com ga in Hoi An, but bigger, which by extension means better.

I am so glad we ordered the papaya salad, because I ended up mixing it with my fried rice. A possibly heretical move, but one that made my dish infinitely more enjoyable and akin to eating a com ga without the ga (chicken). Both Phuong and I were not overly thrilled with the two fried rice dishes to be honest. They were not crispy enough for her (she likes it the traditional Vietnamese way), and for me they were just a little too bland. They would have made great side dishes, but as the mains They didn’t really wow me. The chili sauce was nice and after mixing it all into the rice of my pork fried rice, it gave it a much better kick, but overall, it wasn’t really my kind of fried rice. The pork seemed a little bit of an afterthought and was drowned by carrots and green beans. It wasn’t too crispy, but it didn’t do anything to change my mind about Vietnamese fried rice. Although saying that, Phuong is Vietnamese and she wasn’t overly thrilled with hers either. It was a more traditional Hoi An style, but it will have to come a long way to beat the fried rice at Hai Cafe in my humble opinion. It was salvaged somewhat by the addition of the papaya salad, but if I hadn’t ordered that I would have been very disappointed.

Overall, then, if you are looking for a place that sells all the traditional Hoi An dishes in one place and uses quality fresh ingredients, then this might be the place for you. If you are new to Hoi An, you will certainly enjoy the food here, as the menu will seem varied and new, and as Old Town restaurants go, the prices are quite reasonable. The problem is that when you have been here for a while, the menu is made up of all things that you can buy from street vendors or specialist shops elsewhere in town, that are usually much cheaper, and frankly, quite often better, and I didn’t see any presentation differences to really differentiate the two.