What to Eat in Hoi An: Beyond Cao Lau and Chicken Rice

Hoi An’s food is more than the three bowls everyone names. Besides cao lau, Mi Quang and chicken rice, the old port has a second shelf of small, local things. There are cakes steamed in a flower shape and a sandwich of rice crackers eaten with clams. There is sweet soup from the river island, and there are the sticky-rice sweets that Quang families put on the altar at Tet. This guide covers those dishes, and sends you to the full article when the site already has one.

The dishes at a glance

Banh dap and hen xao: crackers, clams and a river island

If you only try one new thing, make it banh dap.

It is a piece of wet rice cake set between two thin grilled rice crackers, and the wet cake inside is smeared with mashed mung bean before the whole thing is pressed together. The “dap” in the name means to beat: the maker taps the layers lightly by hand so the two crackers stick together. The usual partner is hen xao, stir-fried small clams, and the proper dip is nuoc mam cai, made from sugar, fried shallot, chopped pineapple, garlic and green chilli.

The clams come from Cam Nam, the land on the Thu Bon river where Con Hen (Clam Islet) lies. The little clams there have sweet, fragrant meat.

Hen xao eaten with rice cracker began as a countryside snack and became a speciality for visitors, served with pepper, chilli, lime and rau ram and a crisp black-sesame cracker. A 2015 VnExpress guide pointed to a shop called Ba Gia in hamlet 1 of Cam Nam commune for this dish; it is a lead, not a current recommendation, so confirm it is still open.

White rose cakes: a dish unique to Hoi An

White rose cakes are a regional specialty unique to Hoi An. The wrapper is translucent and pinched into a flower, which gave the dish its English name. There are two kinds on one plate: banh vac is mainly shrimp, banh bao is pork with local seasoning. The shrimp filling is pounded river shrimp with pepper, garlic, shallot and lemongrass; the pork one uses pork, wood-ear mushroom and spring onion.

The cakes were made at the White Rose restaurant at 533 Hai Ba Trung Street, in a 2019 report. Other Hoi An shops order from it and resell, because people who tried to make their own failed to get the taste right. The price then was VND 3,000 each at the source and VND 5,000-7,000 elsewhere, as of April 2019. That is old money, so ask before you order.

Banh xoai: a mango-shaped cake with no mango

You will see banh xoai on the stalls of street hawkers and small roadside shops. Despite the name there is no mango in it; the name comes from the cake’s look. It is made from sticky-rice flour, sesame or sugar, and peanuts. No document records when it began, though local memory places it before 1975. Treat it as a pocket snack to buy as you walk, not a sit-down dish.

Che bap: corn soup from Cam Nam

The corn for che bap is grown in Cam Nam, on land built up by Thu Bon river silt, the same riverside district that gives banh dap its clams. Cam Nam still had nearly 100 corn-growing households in a July 2026 report, and a Cam Nam corn festival, reported in 2018, lets visitors cook dishes such as che bap themselves.

How it is cooked is where accounts differ. One July 2026 account cooks the corn with pandan leaf and sugar and no coconut milk at all, yet the same page later mentions the light richness of coconut milk in the cooled soup. So if you care, ask the seller. People in Hoi An usually eat it hot, especially on a lightly rainy afternoon.

Banh no and banh to: the Tet cakes

These two belong to the calendar rather than to a stall. Banh to is made from two main ingredients, sticky rice and sugar, and it has long been part of Quang offerings, Tet, festivals and welcoming guests. One report names it as made with dark sugar and fragrant sticky rice.

Banh no is the puffed one. It is made from sticky rice, white sugar, ginger and salt.

The rice is roasted until the grains burst, then picked clean of leftover husk. It is mixed into cooled ginger sugar, pressed into square moulds and dried over charcoal.

Tan Tho village in Duy Chau commune, Duy Xuyen district, is the only place in Quang Nam still keeping the traditional craft, as of January 2024. Its families start from the beginning of the tenth lunar month, and people buy the cakes to offer to their ancestors at Tet. Because it is a seasonal craft, expect to find it near Tet, not all year.

Banh mi: the one to check yourself

Banh mi is where we have the least to stand on. In 2015 VnExpress wrote that mention of Hoi An banh mi makes everyone think of Banh Mi Phuong, praised by foreign food experts.

The same piece put Madame Khanh on Tran Cao Van Street, a little away from the old quarter, a tiny shop with a plain cabinet. Tourists had nicknamed it the “Banh mi Queen”. Both reports are old, so we give no address, hours or price. Look both shops up on a map app before you walk over.

Dishes the site already covers

• Cao lau: the noodle of Hoi An town, chewy, dark yellow, made with ash water and eaten with pork, sprouts and herbs. Start here if you have one bowl.
• Mi Quang: the broad rice noodle of Quang Nam with a little thick sauce, peanuts and a sesame cracker; the article follows it to Phu Chiem village.
• Hoi An chicken rice: rice cooked in chicken broth with shredded chicken and herbs.
• Che luc tau xa: the thick mung-bean sweet soup that came with overseas Chinese traders. Pair it with the corn che above.
• Banh beo: small steamed rice cakes in bowls, cut with a bamboo knife in Hoi An.
• Hoi An chilli sauce: the jar to take home, from one family’s old house.

How to put a day together

Start with cao lau or Mi Quang for breakfast, take banh beo or banh xoai in the afternoon, and finish the evening with white rose cakes and a bowl of che. If you can spare the time, add a trip to Cam Nam for banh dap and clams. If your trip falls near Tet, add banh no and banh to; otherwise they are mostly gifts and altar food.

For a wider list of places to eat in Da Nang and Hoi An see danangoi.com/places/ (opens in a new tab).

Photos (1)

• Chainwit., CC BY 4.0 (opens in a new tab)