this was our first meal arriving in hoi an on 21.12.2015, the start of our 5pax family to hoi an, hanoi & halong bay on 21-27.12.2015. ^^ a wonderful start to our vietnam trip! ^^

eldest daughter was reading up on the makan places & cafe.

we took the last free bus at 7pm from essence hotel where we were staying. bus stopped at phan chau trinh just outside ancient city, & we walked towards the river song thu bon. morning glory is located at nguyen thai hoc, along the same road as the japanese covered bridge.

restaurant was easy to locate.

& ambience is quite charming.

& mostly good reviews. 🙂

it is of course more expensive than the other local eating places but food was quite good.

we ordered the usual favourites. one was the white rose or banh bao vac. it’s a hoi an specialty, a shrimp dumpling in a translucent white dough bunched up looking much like a white rose (top photo). indeed it was very well done, very smooth skin & nice dumpling. 🙂

we ordered the grilled pork with rice paper or thit nuong. this another excellent dish that we took in the streets the next day. it was really nice wrapped with all the herbs. 🙂

& the beef with betel leaves..

this was a much better one than what we had in a local restaurant.

& of course the pho bo (beef noodles).

pho here was better than the hotel breakfast version & another local restaurant but not in the league of pho lien which we tried the next day. did not get a chance to try pho xua (though we walked past several times) nor pho tung.

the grilled eggplants were featured in other reviews. and indeed they were very good.

bun cha was good too. but i prefer chargrilled pork neck to grilled meatballs. i walked by dac kim in hanoi on my last day in vietnam on 27.12.2015 but didn’t have occasion to try, but surprisingly we did have a very good one at the airport (something quite unheard off…lol.)!^^

we ordered 2 curries – a duck leg curry,

& a prawn curry.

my first comment was it was not great, but almost immediately i announced to my family i changed my mind.

the curries were milder, not so lemak & intense like thai curries, but actually they were pretty tasty.

i enjoyed both of them. 🙂

we decided to add more food, so ordered bun cha, beef in betel leaves & a mackerel in caramelised sauce. mackerel was good.

dinner came to 1.2million dong. that’s like S$80 so S$16pax nett. i guess that was expensive in hoi an, certainly >2x the price in local restaurants. with the ambience, much better quality for the same food, i think it was quite worth the price. 🙂

c.h.e.f andy