Hoi An Food & Cooking: A Day for Food Lovers
Hoi An is one of Vietnam's great eating towns, with dishes you'll find nowhere else — cao lau noodles, crispy banh mi and delicate white-rose dumplings. Here is how to spend a full day tasting, shopping and cooking your way through it, with the best-rated food tours, cooking classes and village trips to book.
At a glance
- 1Old Town street-food walk
- 2Market shop & basket-boat cook
- 3Cao lau, banh mi & white rose
- 4Herbs at Tra Que village
Morning: a street-food walk through the Old Town
Begin with a guided food walk through the lanes of the Ancient Town, where a local leads you between the stalls that get it right. Expect a banh mi from a legendary cart, a bowl of cao lau — the pork-and-noodle dish made only with water from a local well — and a plate of white-rose dumplings. Tours run about three hours and cost from $25–35, tastings included. Come hungry; it usually adds up to a full lunch.
Midday: shop the market, then cook by the river
A hands-on cooking class is the heart of a Hoi An food day. Most start at the central market, where the chef walks you through unfamiliar herbs and how to pick them, then paddle a basket boat out to a riverside kitchen. You'll cook three or four dishes — fresh spring rolls, a clay-pot fish, maybe your own rice paper — and sit down to eat what you made. Half-day classes run from about $30–45 with the market tour and boat ride included.
Afternoon: the herb gardens of Tra Que
Three kilometres from town, Tra Que village has grown herbs in seaweed-fed soil for 400 years, supplying the restaurants you ate at that morning. Pull on a conical hat to rake beds, water rows with the traditional twin cans and learn to fold the fresh greens into local specialities. Many visits finish with a cooking session or a foot soak, and you can cycle out through the rice paddies. Half-day experiences start from around $20–30.
Book the experiences in this itinerary
Top-rated tours for exactly what this plan recommends in Hoi An — prices per person.
