Danang swallowed Quang Nam and Hoi An came with it, and seven new bars and restaurants have opened across the enlarged city. There’s a speakeasy, an oyster counter, a poutine joint from Matty Matheson’s sidekick, and four more stone-cold sensational spots.
As you may remember, Quang Nam was dissolved into Danang City in 2025, and from 1 July that year Hoi An stopped being a city and became a ward of it. That makes Danang Vietnam’s largest centrally-governed city, nine times its old size, with three UNESCO sites inside it and year-round appeal.
The numbers have followed. Danang’s hotels served nearly 9.8 million visitors in the first half of 2026, up 22.5 percent. International arrivals hit 5.2 million, up 28.7 percent, outnumbering domestic guests for the first time. Accommodation and catering revenue in May alone was up 27.5 percent on the year before.
But what we’re really interested in is the evolution of the city’s bar and restaurants.
Seven Of The Best New Bars And Restaurants In Danang
Take these seven new places, from the Hoi An’s Ancient Town up to Son Tra. There’s a speakeasy on Lê Hồng Phong with a menu that travels by country, and a modern Vietnamese restaurant underneath it.
There’s a MICHELIN Bib Gourmand chef’s second Indian restaurant, this one in Hoi An, where the fusion gets left behind.
There’s a natural wine bistro out on the peninsula with the skeleton of a fishing boat over the pass. A cocktail bar in Ngũ Hành Sơn run by one of three global winners at this year’s SIP Supernova. And an oyster counter built like a street cart, from the family behind Cabanon Palace.
The Keepsake Bar Danang
Is it so hard? Just turn the lights down low. Have a welcoming counter and some soft seating dotted around. Serve the classics well. And make the signatures varied and go easy on the syrup. Add ornaments, if you like. Finally, serve shaken or stirred.
Thankfully, The Keepsake Bar, Danang, sticks firmly to the speakeasy script.
The space is satisfyingly dark. Best friends and dating couples lean close in conversation. The walls are deep red. Thick velvet stage curtains hang by the windows. The counter is dark stone, dressed with tan leather mats and low enough to lean on. Odd artifacts litter the space – a clay Egyptian cat stares down the bar, dried foliage, hurricane sconces. A brass plaque on a riveted steel column, painted out in the same red as everything else, is the only place the name appears.
The menu is themed by destinations around the world. There’s a silky Negroni twist – naturally an ode to Italy – called ‘Nero 1919’, that strips the original of its overbearing stickiness. The ‘Yuzu Sour’ is pillow-soft with a touch of citrus and comes with a paper crane suspended from one side in tribute to Japan. And the flavors of India are framed as a ‘Chai & Tonic’, spirited and tannic, floral and fizzy, garnished with a whole spray of elderflower that spills flowers across the bar as you draw it closer to you.
You get in character on the staircase up from Kỷ Vật – Vietnamese Restaurant (which also means Keepsake, in Vietnamese). The wine-red brick walls are strewn with art in mismatched frames – gilt ovals, black lacquer and thin brass strips – containing loose pencil drawings of nudes or a print of a windmill. Brass table lamps stand on ledges at intervals, and painted onto the brick is the line: “Keep this alive till forever, that is, if forever exists.”
It’s less a curation than an accumulation, snatched souvenirs from a life of travel, just like the menu.
Then the dry martini arrives in more seductive Kimura-style glassware. Cold and calculated. The classics, done well. You scan the signatures for one more – maybe the Thai ‘Siam Colada’ or the Mexican ‘Mi Corazón’ – just to keep the moment alive forever, that is, if forever exists.
What: A speakeasy cocktail bar above Kỷ Vật, with a globe-trotting menu so you can save on flights (maybe get a cocktail flight instead).
Where: 56A Lê Hồng Phong, Hải Châu, Danang
When: Tuesday to Sunday from 5:30pm. Closes at midnight Wednesday, 1:30am the rest of the week. Closed Monday.
How: Instagram | Facebook | +84 868 569 353
Kỷ Vật – Vietnamese Restaurant
Downstairs, at Kỷ Vật – Vietnamese Restaurant, the mood is more meditative. On the wall behind the bar at Kỷ Vật, a painting of a woman in a nón lá sets the tone. She looks out past the boats and the river and everyone sitting in front of her, like she’s seen them all before.
Her features, the boat and the river are rendered in the Indochine-school manner – all teal and gold, orange flowers scattered across her áo dài like they’ve been laid on top of her. And there’s light reflecting off the water.
The room is lit to about the level of the painting like it’s in reverence to the woman herself. And so is the decoration. Black wire cages hang at different heights, woven into the shape of Vietnamese bamboo fish traps. Underfoot, blue, sage and ochre tiles form free-form shapes set into polished concrete like a liquid spilled on the ground, seeping out – the same shape reappears upstairs in the raised dining room.
The fishing woman would probably appreciate the food too – dishes rooted in Vietnamese traditions but gently brought up to date.
The seafood bánh cuốn is warming, rolled around crab, prawn and fishcake, and comes with chili tom yum on the side. “It’s coastal, generous, a little unexpected, and still very Vietnamese,” Chef Tuấn smiles. Kỷ Vật is his vision – shot through with childhood memories, elevated by the techniques he developed in five-star kitchens, and adding small creative touches, “only when they make the dish better.”
Like in his bún bò Huế that’s built on a lobster bisque base. And still tastes like bún bò Huế. The seasoning, the memory, the comfort are still there. “The technique gives more depth; it does not erase the original,” he shrugs. Then there’s the beef tartare that tastes like phở, only here you wrap it in rice paper. And the kind of honeycomb cake Chef Tuấn ate as a child – “personal, but still very easy to enjoy” – now with salted coconut cream, pandan custard and mango.
“You know you have gone too far when the guest needs an explanation before they can enjoy it,” he summarizes. And Kỷ Vật – Vietnamese Restaurant is pure enjoyment.
What: Chef Tuấn’s modern Vietnamese, downstairs from The Keepsake, watched over by a kindly fisherwoman.
Where: 56A Lê Hồng Phong, Hải Châu, Danang
When: Daily, 11am to 10pm
How: Instagram | Facebook | +84 356 816 309
Gụ Wine Bistro
Luke Riffaud is over at the ‘Specials’ chalkboard wiping off the Caesar Salad. Sold out. Still, there’s La Galette, and Tartiflette, and Pigeon with Spinach and Sweet Potato according to the board. For now anyway. It’s a Monday night and Gụ Wine Bistro is packed out.
Luke runs the front of house. His brother Axel co-owns the place, and also heads up Glouglou, the wine company that’s been supplying us with the best natural, biodynamic and organic wines for as long as we can remember. But mostly, Axel describes himself as simply a happy dad of one dog and two cats.
Gụ Wine Bistro has that kind of homely simplicity too.
“All we do is offer good food and good wine for a good time in a comfy place,” he says. “Everything about food is honest, fresh, well executed.”
Comfy is right. Dark wood tables, low light, and counters instead of a dining room. One runs along the open kitchen. Another faces the decks. Tables 2 to 5 go between them, the veranda takes table 1, and upstairs there’s a balcony seat at the window. Above the kitchen hangs a long curve of timber, the skeleton of an old fishing boat that spent decades in the waters off Danang and Hoi An. Plates arrive white with a navy rim and a lowercase gụ on the edge. The menu is cream card, printed in the same navy.
Alessio Rasom runs the kitchen. (He’s also behind Si Dining and Cucina Luca across town, and Si Dining is in the MICHELIN Guide.) Happily, two Cucina Luca dishes appear on the Gụ menu under their own heading – Pappardelle White Ragu and Radiatori Tiger Prawn Tomato. Everything else is bistro brilliance. Beef tartare with homemade fries. Pâté de Campagne with house pickles. Boudin Noir with mash. Beef Bourguignon. Terrine de Foie Gras and brioche. Sourdough with Les Frères Marchand butter.
Alessio sources locally wherever he can. “He is not a good customer for importing food supplier companies,” Axel laughs. The Mille-feuille, for example, took three years of R&D. “I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t like this yet,” he adds approvingly.
As for the wine, “we are definitely big nerds,” he admits. The by-the-glass list extends to about twenty, all of it small growers and most of it French, Italian, German or Spanish. Arianna Occhipinti’s SP68 Bianco from Sicily. Guiberteau’s Saumur Blanc. Envínate Benje Blanco from Tenerife. Tony Bornard’s Les Marnes from the Jura. Two oranges, including d.b. Schmitt’s Wild Pony. The reds take in La Stoppa, Château Thivin, Clos Mogador and Occhipinti again.
The cocktails stay closer to home. The Negroni is built on Song Cái, a Vietnamese gin, and there are two more local gins – Lady Trieu and Saigon Baigur – served long with Fever-Tree tonic. The digestifs include Rhum Sampan from Hoi An alongside Massenez Mirabelle and Christian Drouin Calvados.
Axel recommends the Squid Persillade and a glass of SP68. Or the Boudin Noir purée with Domaine de Bel Air’s ‘Jour de Soif’ Cabernet Franc. “Miam!” he says with lip-smacking approval.
Music is a core element of the Gụ Wine Bistro concept too. The DJ is breezing through a set that spans Bill Withers and afrobeat. And they welcome music curators with their vinyl. The decks are as storied as some of the artists they play, Axel says. One of the turntables was used at a festival in the Philippines years ago by A Tribe Called Quest. “That turntable has some stories.” And so, considering the influx of gratified guests, will Gụ Wine Bistro very soon.
What: Counter culture at this wine bistro from Axel and Luke Riffaud with Alessio Rasom overseeing the kitchen.
Where: 42 Đặng Vũ Hỷ, Sơn Trà, Danang
When: Daily, 11am to 11:30pm
How: Instagram | Facebook | Website | +84 832 240 246
Phirangg
The streets outside – usually thronged with tourists – are quiet already. It’s Sunday night in Hoi An and the day trippers have trundled off back to their hotels and the light rain is keeping everyone else inside.
Lunch, Chef Sohan informs us, was another matter. Phirangg – like its sister restaurant RANG in Danang – was packed. The name ‘rang’ links the two places with Phirangg playfully taking the name for foreigners in Hindi. Only, the approach here is a little different.
Sohan built RANG in Danang on Indian food with Mediterranean technique, and MICHELIN handed it a Bib Gourmand five months after it opened. Phirangg, his second restaurant, is 30 kilometers south in Hoi An’s old town.
“At RANG we have contemporary Indian food. Here we do regional cuisine,” Sohan explains. A long bar runs through the center of the space – for Indian concepts the cocktail program has been progressive since the start.
Sohan has a menu in each hand and a question. Wine or cocktails. We take the ‘Kesar Vodka Martini’, with a hint of saffron and some floral notes from rose water but still a ballsy old-school rendition. There’s a ‘Smoky Chai Rum Old Fashioned’ too, a ‘Jaljeera Mojito’ and a ‘Masala Bloody Mary’ – with Indian chaat masala and green chili and coriander filling in for tabasco.
Puffed up pani puri arrives with the sauce in a jug and poured at the table. “This is classic traditional Indian style,” Sohan says unapologetically. After it, galouti kebab with tiny pastry caps – some on top, some under the patty. “It’s the minced meat, they mix with the spices to make a patty,” he says. “We mash it really, really tight. Mash it with the hand.”
Then tandoori chicken tikka, served with green sauce. “The bestseller,” Sohan nods approvingly as the plate touches down. Sohan does not eat beef. But it’s so tantalizing he has to taste it. “Being a chef, you have to try,” he shrugs.
Anytime the conversation lulls, you’ll notice there are ornaments everywhere. All of them collected on a monumental shopping trip across India. There are rows of bells along the ceiling beams upstairs, and an alcove full of pewter jugs, a gramophone, and papier-mâché masks and other Indian ephemera.
The one thing in the room that is not Indian is the mural of six women in red and green lehengas, dupattas over their heads, and their eyes lowered. It’s a single panel, painted in Hanoi by the same artist who did the signature piece at RANG, then driven down by truck.
“It’s heavy,” Sohan says, glancing over at the piece behind the bar. And so is the vibe here, full of authentic Indian touches and a menu that traverses the country.
What: Chef Sohan takes regional Indian cuisine to Hoi An Ancient Town.
Where: 79 Phan Châu Trinh, Hoi An, Danang
When: Daily, noon to 10:30pm
How: Instagram | Facebook | Website | +84 961 464 043
Half Half Cocktail & More
“It’s built to make you feel warm and at peace,” Enzo (or Phan Cao Duy Hiếu) says about his new bar, Half Half Cocktail & More.
We’re fortunate to catch the globetrotting bartender.
In May he flew to Tokyo for the global final of SIP Supernova, Pernod Ricard’s competition for bartenders with six years or less behind the stick. Twenty-seven competitors from fifteen countries took part, and three of them came away winners on 13 May. Enzo was one, alongside Juseong Park of Bar Soko in Seoul and Zachary Tan Zewei of Employees Only Singapore. The drink that got him there is called ‘The Reunion’, built on Hanoi egg coffee.
That’s the register at Half Half generally. Enzo describes the bar as a peaceful place “where a cocktail can feel both unfamiliar and like home, all in a single sip.” Contrast blended into harmony. It’s all in the name: two halves making a whole.
He founded Half Half Cocktail & More and built the team. “Every single person on my team is talent in their own right,” he says, “each one shining in a different area.”
Take the seat in the dead center of the bar. There you have a view of the bartender working directly in front of you. There’s a skylight in the ceiling above the counter to add some dramatic lighting at dusk, and the stage sits just off to one side.
The design is the one thing people get misled by. “People often see our fancy design and assume the cocktails must be expensive,” he says. “But that’s simply not the case.” Classics, for example, start at VND 180K.
‘The Reunion’ from the ‘award-winners’ menu contains Altos Reposado, pistachio milk, coffee, Hanoi sabayon and nutmeg. It sits in a list of eight award-winners that lean hard on bitterness and savory edges – ‘Kowa’ puts bitter melon against elderflower, matcha and tonic over Bumbu rum, ‘Mamarita’ is tequila and lime with Vietnam celery, and ‘Vina Rita’ is Campari and Cinzano rosso built on leftover coffee.
The four signatures are looser. ‘Margasuma’ is a margarita with shrimp salt, tamarind and green chili. ‘Recall The Dream’ takes Làng Black into coconut, pandan and dry vermouth. ‘Rabou Fizz’ is a long one, with Wild Turkey and Campari, and cacao butter, banana and white chocolate.
The classics are filed by spirit – rum, tequila, vodka, brandy, gin, whisky, whiskey – and tagged by profile and strength. Each comes on a house base with the upgrades priced alongside. On rum, for example, there’s Brugal as standard, Mount Gay for another VND 50K, Havana 7 for VND 110K. You pick the drink, then you pick how far up the shelf you’re going.
Ingredients come off the market. He found bánh bột lọc there one day, the clear tapioca dumplings filled with shrimp and pork, and started working on how to get it into a glass. There’s also a signature shot he won’t describe beyond this. “Deeply Vietnamese, yet classic and familiar.” It arrives at the table without being ordered.
The hardest part, he says, is balancing genuine value against the quality of the drinks and the service, “in a way that keeps guests from ever feeling bored, no matter how many times they come back.” So far, he’s managing the feat with the same aplomb he brought to SIP Supernova.
What: A cocktail bar in Ngũ Hành Sơn from Enzo, one of three global winners at SIP Supernova 2026, who’s busy working Vietnamese ingredients into classic shapes.
Where: 32 Phan Liêm, Ngũ Hành Sơn, Danang
When: Daily, 7pm to 2am
How: Instagram | Facebook | Website | +84 931 951 840
Oyster Palace
It was love at first sight. Or perhaps, more accurately, at first scroll. We obsessed over Cabanon Palace’s cinematic social media. Then discovered the characters behind the restaurant were as enigmatic in real life – two Marseille-Corsican brothers, Hélio and Nathan, and Chloé, Hélio’s wife, had packed the space with theatrical stage curtains, statues of Napoleon and model ships. And the food was a series of family recipes brought up to date and served (at its second location) atop a downtown Danang hotel.
Vietnam eats plenty of oysters. “However, presenting them raw, in different sizes and varieties, and making oyster-and-cocktail pairing the center of an entire concept was something quite new,” they say. “In many ways, it was a slightly crazy gamble.”
Flushed with the adoration, and buoyed by a series of successful oyster pop-ups in both Danang and Saigon, Hélio, Nathan and Chloé opened Oyster Palace in April, a restaurant that amplifies all the elements we loved about Cabanon Palace while gathering new inspirations.
From the French bar à huîtres they took the respect for the product and the pleasure of eating it plainly. From American oyster bars, the counter, the ordering by the piece and the drinking that goes with it. From Japanese omakase, the trust – letting the team steer you. “We drew inspiration from all three. However, we are Oyster Palace.” It’s a place, they reckon, that might be the first oyster bar in Central Vietnam.
Everything happens on a stainless-steel counter through the middle of the room. The oysters get opened in front of you. “There is something very direct and honest about preparing food in front of the guest, with no barrier between the product, the person serving it and the person enjoying it,” they say. The model for it is the xe đẩy, the Vietnamese street cart. Behind the counter they make their own vinegars from wine, and there is caviar on the list sold without ceremony.
Cabanon Palace exudes the Années Folles. This one Mean Streets, Snatch and Wong Kar Wai’s 2046. “A more intense, nocturnal and slightly rebellious world,” they say.
Take a seat at the steel rather than one of the round sofa tables. “That is where you understand the venue most clearly.” Start with the twelve-oyster discovery platter and Champagne, which allows guests to explore the oysters in different sizes and salinity. Then a few dressed to whatever the person behind the counter suggests. Then the ‘Oyster Bloody Mary Shot’ and understand the movies-made-real mindset of three Danang restaurant mavericks.
What: Raw oysters and cocktail pairings on a steel counter, from the Cabanon Palace family.
Where: 2F Martin Ho Hotel, 22 Phước Trường 9, An Hải, Danang
When: Tuesday to Saturday, 6pm to midnight. Closed Sunday and Monday.
How: Instagram | Facebook | +84 971 098 107
King Poutine
It has been argued (mostly by us) that the ‘Chicken Finger Birthday Sub’ episode of Matty Matheson’s Just a Dash is the greatest episode of food TV ever made. There are murder hornets, a rollercoaster of birthday emotions, a hurtful broken camera hoax, and constant complaining from Matty’s sidekick that chicken finger subs suck.
That sidekick is Chef Rang. And Rang has had quite a life. Born in Phan Rang. A refugee who ended up in Newfoundland. A kung-fu kicking club bouncer, then a French-trained chef. That’s how he met Matty.
“I’ve almost died five times,” Chef Rang says, immediately veering off topic. Because the topic is King Poutine, we remind him, steering him back on course.
He opened it in Saigon, then heard enough stories of beachside bliss to pack up the whole restaurant and move it to Danang. He’s looking good on it, tanned and terrific as he applies the finishing touches to the new location.
“I’m chef handsome Rang!” he agrees.
That not many people here know what poutine is isn’t stopping him. He breaks it down again for us, patiently, as he must have done a thousand times already. Fries. Cheese curds, which have to squeak. Some hot gravy over the top so the curds go soft without melting away.
It works before drinking and it works after drinking. In fact, he argues, it just works. He’s working on the world’s greatest Philly cheesesteak sandwich too, he admits. And some other signature dishes for what is sure to become as essential a neighborhood hangout as Just a Dash is an essential watch on YouTube.
What: Québécois poutine from Chef Rang, who moved the whole Saigon operation to Danang and is busy soaking his Philly cheesesteak sandwich in beachside bliss.
Where: 18 La Xuân Oai Street Ngu Hanh Son Ward, Danang
When: 11am to 10:30pm and closed Mondays.
How: Instagram | Website
