The Best Restaurants in Da Nang: From Street Food to Haute Cuisine

It arrives unceremoniously: a bowl set down in front of me with a swirl of steam and a clatter of chopsticks. The noodles are fat and zingy, stained yellow from turmeric broth, and I slurp them down hungrily, chilli oil clinging to my lips.

“This is soul food for me,” says Helen Le, a food influencer from Da Nang, the largest port city on Vietnam’s central coast. It’s 8.45am on a Thursday and we’re sitting on red plastic stools at My Quang Nhung (135 Nguyen Tat Thành, Thanh Bình, Hai Châu; +84 935 863 170), a kerbside eatery teeming with locals. “If I could eat one dish for the rest of my life, it would be this: mì quang. In Da Nang, it’s the dish our mums and grandmas made for us. It’s a special flavour.

We pay $1.80 for our bowls – Le’s with frog, mine with prawns – and step onto the street, dodging honking scooters in search of more authentic Central Vietnamese fare. I crunch on bánh mì slathered with pâté, housemade mayo and fluffy chicken floss then down bánh xèo – crisp, savoury rice crêpes I’ll remember forever – from no-frills eatery Bánh Xèo Bà Duong.

“Here, you can spend $3 on a plate of bánh xèo that will blow your mind or $300 at a beachfront resort with five-star service,” says Le. The region’s fine-dining scene, she adds, has gained momentum since last year, when Da Nang became the third Vietnamese city to be recognised in the Michelin Guide. “Both meals will be memorable – one for its bold flavours and energy, the other for its refinement and setting.”

Well-fed and satisfied, I retreat to the InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort (above). Built into a cliff on the Son Tra Peninsula, it’s 20 minutes from downtown Da Nang and about an hour from Hoi An, the UNESCO-listed ancient town that attracts throngs of tourists with its bustling night market and movie set-pretty streets. But it feels like another world: lush and leafy, silent but for birdsong and designed in tiers that cascade down to a private beach, best accessed by a funicular shaped like a traditional Vietnamese fishing boat.

The 39-hectare property has 189 rooms, suites and villas dreamt up by American architect Bill Bensley and splashed with vibrant fabrics and monkey motifs. These are not just decorative; the resort runs conservation programs for the red-shanked douc langur, a critically endangered primate I spot swinging in the almond trees near my suite. Later, I dine at the onsite La Maison 1888, the only Michelin-starred restaurant in Central Vietnam. The degustation by chef Christian Le Squer is as theatrical as it is indulgent: sea bass from Japan is doused in buttermilk from Brittany, served with caviar and herbs from the hotel garden. The encore is a salted iced coffee native to the area. It’s creamy, bitter, salty and sweet; like the region itself, a delicious study in contrasts.