The 11 Best Vietnamese Restaurants in Budapest

Lined with Thai, Indian, Korean, and Vietnamese restaurants near one another, Budapest’s sleepy Szondi Street in District 6 is a paradise of international food. Saigon Bistro, a humble, takeout-looking spot, is one of the few Southern Vietnamese places in Budapest — Hungary took immigrants from the Communist north during the Vietnam War — which means that the dishes here are more gussied up with garnishes and sweeter flavors than elsewhere.

Dang Muoi is a small family-owned Vietnamese restaurant chain with three locations across Budapest. My favorite one lines the car-saturated Attila út in Buda (with little foot traffic, it's not exactly a restaurateur's dream location). Don't expect on-trend mid-century furnishings or a hip ambiance — it's the food that takes center stage here.

A sleek dining space, trilingual menus, and a prime downtown location aren't usually hallmarks of Budapest's modest, mom-and-pop Vietnamese restaurants. Not so with Quán Nón. The standout dish here is the bun cha, a northern Vietnamese staple of grilled pork patties paired with rice vermicelli and the sweet-sour nước chấm dressing. The pork arrives perfectly marinated and with splotches of char from the grill.

Hanoi Xua is an unpretentious Vietnamese restaurant in Budapest best known for its extensive soup selections and above-average fried rice dishes. The place occupies the ground floor of a residential apartment building in the outer part of District 9, once a seedy neighborhood but now rapidly transforming thanks to moneyed international medical students at the nearby Semmelweis University.

Hanoi Pho’s moniker is misleading because their pho soup is hardly the reason to visit this Vietnamese restaurant in the heart of Budapest’s downtown near the Hungarian Parliament building. With a chef duo representing both ends of Vietnam — one of them is from Hanoi, the other Saigon — the restaurant brings rarely seen Vietnamese dishes to Budapest. For example, you'd be hard-pressed to find elsewhere banh xèo, a delicious sizzling savory pancake made from rice flour, coconut milk, and turmeric, and folded with shrimp, lettuce, and bean sprouts.

Hú Lù Lu is a small Vietnamese restaurant in Budapest’s party district, the type of place where the food speaks louder than the decor (always the better combination). Two Vietnamese-Hungarian twentysomethings, originally from Nghệ An in north-central Vietnam, set out to serve up dishes from their home region alongside Vietnamese classics.

Vietnami Speciális Melegkonyha is a bare-bones restaurant outside the city center serving Vietnamese dishes you're unlikely to find elsewhere in Budapest. Location is the only downside: it takes about 20 minutes by car to get to from downtown, but at least you'll discover the less-traveled parts of Budapest. The owners took over the space from an Italian restaurant without redoing the interior, hence the bizarre Tuscan countryside wall paintings.

Located on the Buda side of Budapest, Hai Nam is the most popular Vietnamese restaurant for local Hungarians in the city. Like it or not, the Vietnamese owners adjust the dishes to local tastes, which can mean that flavorful cuts are swapped out for less fatty meats as in the case of the bun cha, normally a mound of delicious grilled pork belly.