Across from Hanoi’s Temple of Literature, Gia occupies the foundations of a century-old house. Its tasting menu changes with the northern season and the memories of chef Sam Tran. In Ho Chi Minh City, Ănăn Saigon rises through a narrow tube house inside Chợ Cũ, the old market, using the commotion and produce outside as part of its working pantry.
The two rooms describe Vietnam’s Michelin era better than a star count can. Hanoi’s most interesting contemporary kitchens often draw on seasonal Northern memory, preservation, and a measured sense of place. Ho Chi Minh City’s chefs work in a port city shaped by markets, regional migration, overseas return, and a greater appetite for collision. Neither city has settled on a single definition of Vietnamese fine dining, which is precisely why the conversation is worth following.
“It’s not about the dishes that you see on the table, but the stories behind each one. It’s about the season, the ingredients, and the recipes that have been cherished for generations.”
Sam Tran, speaking to the Michelin Guide in March 2024 about the women and family feasts that shaped her cooking
Michelin changes the field
Vietnam’s first Michelin selection arrived in 2023, covering Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Four restaurants received one star: Gia, Ănăn Saigon, Tầm Vị, and Hibana by Koki. Da Nang joined the guide in 2024. The national selection grew to seven starred restaurants that year, nine in 2025, and eleven one-star restaurants in 2026.
The 2026 guide, announced on June 4 at The Ascott Tay Ho Hanoi, includes 193 restaurants: eleven starred, 72 Bib Gourmand, and 110 Michelin Selected. Vietnam still has no two- or three-star restaurant.
Those figures measure momentum, but they require interpretation. The starred list includes Japanese teppanyaki, Korean fine dining, Cantonese cooking, and internationally framed tasting menus as well as Vietnamese restaurants. Michelin maps the country’s restaurant culture across cuisines. A Vietnamese canon requires a narrower lens. The more interesting editorial question is how chefs use regional ingredients, inherited recipes, and personal memory once they enter the tasting-menu room.
Hanoi: season, memory, and northern land
Gia
Sam Tran and operations manager Long Tran opened Gia in 2020 at 61 Văn Miếu Street, directly opposite the Temple of Literature. The restaurant retained its one star in 2026, continuing an unbroken run since the inaugural guide.
Gia’s architecture and menu share a concern with inheritance. The founders preserved elements of the old house beneath the restaurant, while the kitchen builds a single seasonal menu around Vietnamese ingredients and recollection. Since June 2024, Gia says every dish has used entirely local ingredients. Recent menus have moved through tofu, eel, luffa, mustard greens, black chicken, fish congee, and egg coffee without treating familiarity as a shortcut.
This is Northern cooking as lived memory rather than a catalogue of icons. Hanoi’s clear broths, controlled sweetness, dill, turmeric, shrimp paste, charcoal, and changing seasons provide a vocabulary. Tran’s contribution is to decide what belongs in the foreground and what can remain a quiet reference.
The official English menu listed dinner at VND 3,500,000++ and lunch at VND 2,500,000++ when checked in July 2026. The Vietnamese page still displayed an older dinner figure, so confirm the price directly. Reservations are accepted by email at reservations@gia-hanoi.com and by telephone at +84 896 682 996.
Chapter
The guide’s Michelin Selected tier matters here. Chapter, led by chef Quang Dũng, gives fire and Northern produce the starring roles without requiring a star to validate the work. Charcoal cooking, fermentation, mountain herbs, and relationships with farmers allow the restaurant to approach the North as a landscape rather than a set of famous dishes.
Chapter also loosens the format. Its menus use storytelling, including postcards and references to place, but the strongest reason to book is more direct: smoke, preservation, and highland ingredients provide a different grammar from Gia’s intimate seasonal memory. Together, the two restaurants make a more useful Hanoi pairing than two entries selected solely by rank.
Chapter is at 12C Chân Cầm, Hoàn Kiếm. Reserve through the restaurant’s official website and confirm the current menu and cancellation terms there.
ONVIT
ONVIT, newly awarded one star in 2026, is best read as a cross-cultural counterpoint. Chef Chi Joon Hyuk leads a Korean fine-dining restaurant on the third floor of the Grand Plaza Hanoi Hotel, at 117 Trần Duy Hưng Street. A dish such as abalone porridge made with Sóc Trăng ST25 rice and abalone-liver sauce shows how a Korean culinary frame can become attentive to Vietnamese produce.
Sommelier Ngọc Bích Mai received Michelin’s 2026 Sommelier Award, further distinguishing the room. ONVIT does not publish a reliably current first-party price, so ask when reserving through onvitrestaurant@gmail.com or +84 971 688 100.
Ho Chi Minh City: market, migration, and regional memory
Ănăn Saigon
Chef-owner Peter Cuong Franklin opened Ănăn in 2017 at 89 Tôn Thất Đạm Street, inside Chợ Cũ. His biography matters to the menu: a childhood in Da Lat, departure from Vietnam, international training, and return all sit behind a style he calls New Vietnamese cooking.
Street-food forms become the starting point rather than an aesthetic prop. The current menu moves among bánh mì, bún chả, Hanoi turmeric fish, Mekong Delta fish, cơm tấm, and fish-sauce ice cream. The market outside keeps the restaurant connected to ordinary commerce even as the meal follows the price and pacing of international fine dining.
The building requires a little explanation. Ănăn occupies the narrow tube house; the Nhau Nhau cocktail bar is on the second floor and rooftop dining sits above. Pot Au Phở 2.0 now operates separately next door at number 91. There is no casual noodle bar beneath the tasting room.
The official booking page currently lists the Saigon Tasting Menu at US$115 and Chef Peter’s menu at US$145, before optional pairings. It recommends reserving two weeks ahead, with tasting-menu seatings at 5:30 and 8:30 p.m. The walk-up building is not wheelchair accessible, and the restaurant states that it cannot accommodate children under twelve.
Upstairs Tasting Room
Upstairs, awarded its first star in 2026, brings Central Vietnamese memory into a new Ho Chi Minh City dining room. Chef and co-founder Hiệp Trương has family roots in Huế and grew up around his family’s pepper and tobacco farm near Chứa Chan mountain.
That history appears through dishes such as gỏi bò cà, baby clams with rice crackers, scallops with scallion oil, and vịt hon, the Huế-associated braised duck preparation. Central cooking contributes chilli, galangal, mắm ruốc, sour shrimp, and the layered influence of domestic and courtly kitchens. Upstairs uses those references as material for a contemporary menu rather than presenting Huế as a fixed historical style.
The restaurant opened in December 2024 above Little Bear Wine Bar, at 1F, 36 Nguyễn Bá Huân Street, An Khánh Ward. Its official site describes a very small principal dining room plus private rooms, so reserve directly at +84 859 800 586 and ask for the current menu price.
CoCo Dining
For a second Saigon expression, CoCo Dining is more revealing than an imported luxury-hotel format. Chef Võ Thành Vương leads the one-star restaurant at 143 Nam Kỳ Khởi Nghĩa Street. Its current project, Lưu Tích / The Living Archive, explicitly studies cultivation, preservation, heirloom knowledge, and memory.
The language could become academic in lesser hands. What keeps the project relevant is its attention to the people and processes behind ingredients. CoCo belongs in this chapter because it treats research as part of kitchen practice, then asks the plate to remain pleasurable.
Saigon’s international register still deserves acknowledgement. Akuna, led by Australian chef Sam Aisbett on the ninth floor of Le Méridien Saigon, retained its star in 2026. Its highly personal menu combines local and imported ingredients, but it is better evidence of the city’s outward-looking restaurant culture than of Vietnamese culinary memory. That distinction makes both stories clearer.
Practical Notes
Build two different evenings: In Hanoi, pair Gia’s intimate seasonal argument with Chapter’s charcoal and northern produce. In Ho Chi Minh City, book Ănăn for its market-facing New Vietnamese vocabulary and Upstairs or CoCo for a more concentrated study of regional memory.
Reserve through the restaurant: Gia accepts email and telephone bookings. Ănăn publishes its menus, seating times, accessibility limits, and prices online. Chapter and CoCo take reservations through their official sites. Upstairs books by telephone. Policies and deposits can change faster than Michelin status.
Read the classification: The MICHELIN Guide Vietnam 2026 covers Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Da Nang. A star identifies an inspector’s assessment, not a restaurant’s nationality. Hibana by Koki in Hanoi is Japanese teppanyaki; ONVIT is Korean fine dining; Akuna is internationally framed. All belong to Vietnam’s restaurant map, while only some advance this particular account of Vietnamese cooking.
Allow for access: Ănăn’s tube house requires stairs and does not accommodate children under twelve. Ask smaller tasting rooms about stairs, counter seating, allergies, and private-room arrangements before paying a deposit.
For broader regional routing, continue to The Banquet Guide to Bangkok and The Asian Grand Tour.
