New York City / Vietnamese
Best Vietnamese
Restaurants in NYC
Bánh mì from $8 to $28, the best broken rice in the city, and not one published happy hour.
Not one of these 18 rooms publishes a happy hour with days and a time window. That is the honest number.
- 18 verified rooms
- 0 publish a happy hour
- bánh mì $8–$15.50
- 3 closures caught
The best Vietnamese restaurants in NYC right now are Mắm on Forsyth Street (20th on the New York Times’ best-restaurants list, and the bún đậu mắm tôm is the order), Ba Xuyên in Sunset Park ($8 for the bánh mì every other one gets measured against), Little Thanh Đa fourteen blocks up the same avenue ($9, and a veteran critic’s pick for best in the city), Cơm Tấm Ninh Kiều under the elevated train in the Bronx ($18.95 broken rice, and the room is named after the dish) and Bánh Anh Em in the East Village (9.0 from The Infatuation). A bánh mì in this city runs $8 to $15.50, and the price gap is geographic rather than qualitative — the two cheapest sandwiches here are the two that critics call the best. And not one of these eighteen rooms publishes a happy hour with days and a time window. Not one. Two advertise one and print no details, so we print none either.
The short version
- Best banh miBa Xuyên, Sunset Park — $8 for the #1, and it is the sandwich everything else is judged against.
- Best roomMắm on Forsyth: 20th on the NYT’s best-restaurants list. Order the bún đậu mắm tôm.
- Cheapest full mealThái Sơn — nothing over $15, but only if you pay cash. Bring cash.
- The one trip8th Ave, Sunset Park: Ba Xuyên at 4222 and Little Thanh Đa at 5624. Fourteen blocks, two of the best sandwiches in NYC.
- No happy hoursZero of 18. Saigon Social and After Eden advertise one and publish no times.
At a glance
What to order, what it costs where anyone publishes a price, and which hours will catch you out.
| Restaurant | Order this | When | Neighborhood | $ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ba Xuyên | $8 for the #1 | Hours unpublished | Sunset Park | $$$ |
| Little Thanh Đa | $9 for the #1 | Takeout only | Sunset Park | $$$ |
| Thanh Đa | Bánh mì bì | Hours unpublished | Sunset Park | $$$ |
| Bánh Mì Cô Út | $9.25 classic | Hours unpublished | Chinatown | $$$ |
| Bánh Mì Saigon | $9.50 cold cut special | Takeout only | Chinatown | $$$ |
| Bánh Anh Em | Crackle-crusted bánh mì | Walk-in only | East Village | $$$ |
| Xe Máy Sandwich Shop | $14–$15.50 sandwiches | Daily noon–9pm | East Village | $$$ |
| Phê | $28 bánh mì chảo | Weekends 12–4pm | Chinatown | $$$ |
| Summer | The classic | Hours unpublished | Elmhurst | $$$ |
| Cơm Tấm Ninh Kiều | $18.95 house special | Tue–Sun, closed Mon | Kingsbridge | $$$ |
| Mắm | Bún đậu mắm tôm | Hours unpublished | Chinatown | $$$ |
| Saigon Social | Bún chả | Times unpublished | Lower East Side | $$$ |
| Thái Sơn | No phở over $15 cash | Hours unpublished | Chinatown | $$$ |
| Madame Vo | $20 bowl, $10 short rib | Expect a wait | East Village | $$$ |
| Phở Bằng | $14.50 for the #1 | Hours unpublished | Little Italy | $$$ |
| Đi Ăn Đi | Phở and chả giò | Hours unpublished | Greenpoint | $$$ |
| Lê Phin | Phin coffee, pandan latte | Hours unpublished | East Village | $$$ |
| After Eden | Cà phê muối | Tue–Sat 10am–2am | Lower East Side | $$$ |
Map: where these 18 spots are
Two clusters carry this page: 8th Avenue in Sunset Park, and the four blocks around Forsyth and Grand in Chinatown.
Pins are numbered to match the table above – tap any pin for the detail and directions.
The best banh mi in NYC
Nine counters, $8 to $28, and the cheapest two are the best two. See also best deli sandwiches.
Ba Xuyên
Eight dollars. That is the number, and it is the one every other bánh mì in New York quietly gets measured against. The #1 special — the house cold-cut build — was $8 as of March 2025, from a writer who bought one. The same writer recorded it at $3.75 in February 2009, which tells you more about the last sixteen years than any inflation chart. The bread is the reason: the MTA’s own Sunset Park food guide calls it crusty without being dry, with silky pâté underneath. The Infatuation’s banh mi guide picks the #1 first and the #7 sardine second. There is Vietnamese coffee, hot or iced, and pandan sponge cake at the counter. The honest caveat, and it is a live one: NYC Tourism’s page still says the sandwich is “currently priced at under $5.” It is not. Assume $8, and assume nothing about the hours — nobody publishes them, so call (718) 633-6601 before you ride out.
See our best cheap eats in NYC
Little Thanh Đa
Robert Sietsema, in March 2025, on this counter: slinging what are probably the city’s best bánh mì for over 20 years. That is about as close to a settled verdict as this category gets. The #1 is $9, one of seven sandwiches on the board, on a light crisp demi-baguette with barbecued pork, Virginia ham and pork roll all prepared in house. It is the takeout-only offshoot of Thanh Đa, sixteen blocks south on 7th Ave. The local move, and you will need it: the address says 8th Ave but the entrance is around the corner on 57th Street. People walk straight past it. The honest caveat: there is no seating, none, so this is a sandwich you carry — and the two best banh mi in New York are now fourteen blocks apart on the same avenue, which makes the whole trip one walk.
See our Brooklyn happy hours
Thanh Đa
The room that Little Thanh Đa came from, and the one worth choosing when you want to sit down and eat something with a fork. The Infatuation picks the #1 — soft bun, pâté, pickled-vegetable vinegar, chả lụa, barbecue pork. Time Out picks the bánh mì bì, stuffed with ham, pork roll and pork belly. The thing the 8th Ave sandwich counters do not have is here: bún thịt nướng, grilled pork over rice vermicelli. Phone is (718) 492-3253. The honest caveat, and this one is a warning about the internet, not the restaurant: AllMenus still serves this place’s sandwiches at $4.00 and its bún at $5.75. That is an archived menu roughly fifteen years stale. We will not print a price for Thanh Đa, and neither should anyone else.
See our best lunch in NYC
Bánh Mì Cô Út
$9.25 for the classic, on Elizabeth between Grand and Hester — the Manhattan sandwich that holds its own against Sunset Park without the 45-minute ride. The build is the sell: cold cuts, pâté, pork belly and pork floss, which is four separate formats of pork in a single baguette, and they do not fight each other. Price is The Infatuation’s, and it is the most recent one anyone has published. The honest caveat, and people get this wrong constantly: there is a related operation called Kitchen Cô Út at 85 Chrystie St, two blocks away, and it shows up on phở guides. Same family of names, different address, different menu. If you want the sandwich, you want 83 Elizabeth.
See our best Chinatown restaurants
Bánh Mì Saigon
The whole menu still runs $7.50 to $10.50, and they bake the bread themselves — which Time Out flags as genuinely rare for a takeout counter this size. The #13 Vietnamese Cold Cut Special was $9.50 as of May 2025; The Infatuation’s pick is the #4, untoasted baguette, pâté, chả lụa, cucumber, pickled carrot, jalapeño. Still widely listed under its old name, Banh Mi Saigon Bakery. Phone (212) 941-1541. Two honest caveats: the shop is tiny and takeout-only — there is nowhere to stand and eat it, so plan on walking — and the prices date to May 2025, so treat $9.50 as a floor rather than a promise.
getbanhmi.com · See our Little Italy happy hours
Bánh Anh Em
The Infatuation rated it 9.0 and put it in Best Of The Best on 20 April 2026, leading with the bread — crackle-crusted bánh mì. It also carries a MICHELIN Guide listing. What separates it from every other name in this section is that the sandwich is not the whole menu: bánh ướt chồng (customisable rice rolls), chả cá lã vọng (turmeric catfish), bún riêu tốp mỡ, bò né steak and eggs, phở đặc biệt. This is a Northern Vietnamese kitchen that happens to make one of the best sandwiches in the city. The honest caveat: walk-in only, no reservations, at a 9.0-rated room in the East Village — do the arithmetic on the wait. And we are not printing a price: the menu lives on a Square page we cannot read, and guessing is how bad guides get made.
banhanhem.com · See our East Village happy hours
Xe Máy Sandwich Shop
$15.50 is the top of the market, and it is here on St Marks Place. The Hog, the Sidecar, the Lam’bretta, the DUKE and the vegetarian Mean Green all run $15.50; the Super Cub Classic is $14 and the lemongrass-chicken Pilot $14.50. Every sandwich comes with cilantro, pickled carrot, daikon, cucumber and chili mayo, on a white or whole-wheat baguette. Open noon to 9pm daily, with a second shop at 1433 1st Ave on the Upper East Side running 11am–9pm. The honest math: you are paying roughly double the Sunset Park price. What you get for it is a sit-down shop that publishes its hours, publishes its prices, and will make the thing vegetarian — which none of the $8 counters will. Worth it on a Tuesday night in the East Village. Not worth a special trip.
xemaysandwich.com · See our East Village happy hours
Phê
Twenty-eight dollars for a bánh mì. VnExpress reported it on 30 July 2026 against roughly $2 for the same dish in Vietnam, and the internet did what it does. What you actually get is the bánh mì chảo: a baguette plus a skillet of pâté, sausage, beef, fried egg and a wedge of cheese, with unlimited refills of the skillet — which nobody outraged about the price seems to mention. The Infatuation (2 July 2026) calls the place an oasis for coffee and bánh mì with excellent baguettes, and the everyday menu runs $5 to $16, where the roast-pork bánh mì heo quay is the pick. Sister to Mắm, next door at 70 Forsyth. The honest caveat, and it is the hours: sandwiches usually do not appear until Friday afternoon, and the $28 skillet is a weekends-only, 12–4pm proposition. Turn up on a Tuesday and it is a coffee shop.
See our Lower East Side happy hours
Summer
The Queens entry on The Infatuation’s citywide banh mi guide, and the only sandwich on this page built on crumbled caramelized pork rather than sliced cold cuts — against buttery chả lụa, cold cucumber, vinegary carrot and daikon, and cilantro. Counter service, priced in the cheapest band. It is described as impossible to eat without shedding flaky breadcrumbs down your front, which is the point of a good baguette and not a complaint. The honest caveat, stated plainly: the review underneath this is from January 2022 and nobody publishes a price or a set of hours. This is the thinnest-sourced venue on the page, and you should ring ahead before crossing a borough for it.
See our Queens happy hours
Beyond the sandwich: com tam, bun cha, bun dau
The dishes that justify a whole page. More in best Asian restaurants in NYC.
Cơm Tấm Ninh Kiều
The best cơm tấm in New York is under the elevated 4 train in Kingsbridge, and the restaurant is literally named after the dish. The CTNK Rice Special is $18.95; grilled steak, lemongrass chicken, grilled shrimp and vegetarian bowls are $15.95, grilled pork chop and spring roll $15.45. It is also quietly one of the better-value bánh mì counters in the city at $10.95 across most fillings, $11.95 for brisket. Bún bò Huế is $16.45 and phở starts at $14.99. The honest caveat, and it is two-part: it is closed Mondays and it shuts 3pm to 4pm every day it trades — 11am–3pm, then 4pm–8:30pm. Turn up at 3:30 and you are looking at a locked door. Phone (718) 450-3833. And do not trust ctnkpickup.com: that old ordering domain now resolves to a completely different restaurant.
See our Bronx happy hours
Mắm
Twentieth on the New York Times’ best restaurants list in 2024, up from 26th the year before, a Pete Wells two-star Critic’s Pick, 9.4 from The Infatuation, and Time Out has called its phở the best in New York City. That is the most decorated Vietnamese room in the city by a distance. Chef Jerald Head with Nhung Dao, open as a pop-up in 2020 and permanent since May 2022. Order the bún đậu mắm tôm — house-made tofu, pork belly and sticky-rice sausage, all for dipping — plus the nấm cuốn and the gỏi nghêu. Sister to Phê next door at 72 Forsyth, which makes this the densest single block of Vietnamese food in New York. The honest caveat: mắm tôm is fermented shrimp paste and it is pungent in a way that is not up for negotiation. If that is not your thing, order the pork four ways or the mushroom platter — but then you are ordering around the best dish in the room.
See our best restaurants in NYC
Saigon Social
The bún chả is the reason to come — The Infatuation picks it, along with the whole fried cornish hen — from chef-owner Helen Nguyễn, in a room notable enough to carry its own Wikipedia entry. It is also the only Vietnamese kitchen in Manhattan we found that advertises a happy hour at all, and here is where it gets frustrating: the site carries a dedicated Happy Hour section, and that section publishes no days, no window and no prices. Nothing. The dinner and drinks menus went up as July 2026 image files, so none of it is readable either. The honest caveat, and it is on them: until somebody calls (646) 609-3202 and gets a straight answer, we are not putting a deal on this card — and any guide that prints one is making it up. Go for the bún chả, and ask about the happy hour when you get there.
Thái Sơn
The Infatuation, 7.8: no bowl of phở is over $15 — at the cash price. That single qualifier is the whole strategy for eating here. A big Chinatown room by the courthouses where the #3 phở (thinly sliced beef, brisket, tripe and tendon) is the order, and the #1 is the same thing extra-large. But the noodles are not the reason it sits in this section rather than the phở one: there is a full menu behind them — grilled pork bánh mì, grilled beef lettuce wraps, shrimp salad, shaking beef, clay pot fish, stir-fried water spinach with garlic. It turns up on The Infatuation’s banh mi guide and its Vietnamese guide, which almost nothing does. The honest caveat: pay by card and you pay more, and nobody publishes the card rate. Hit the ATM on Baxter first.
See our best cheap eats in NYC
Three bowls worth crossing town for
Held to three on purpose — the full list is in best phở in NYC.
Madame Vo
The basic bowl is $20 and the short rib add-on is another $10, which makes the Madame Phở the most expensive bowl on this page and, reliably, the one with people standing outside waiting for it. Yen Vo and Jimmy Ly’s room on East 10th; The Infatuation picks the Madame Phở with the short rib plus the chả giò, Time Out has run it at the top of its best-phở coverage, and they published a cookbook of Vietnamese home cooking in 2024. The verdict: it is a very good bowl and worth eating once. But Thái Sơn puts a whole phở in front of you for under fifteen in cash, twenty minutes downtown, with no line. Know which night you are having before you pick. More bowls in our guide to the best phở in NYC.
See our best pho in NYC
Phở Bằng
$14.50 for the #1 phở — the cheapest named bowl price we could verify anywhere in Manhattan, on the seam where Little Italy runs into Chinatown. The real argument for it is geography: it sits inside a three-stop walk with Bánh Mì Cô Út at 83 Elizabeth and Bánh Mì Saigon at 198 Grand, which means you can eat a $9 sandwich, a $14.50 bowl and a Vietnamese iced coffee inside six blocks for under thirty dollars. The honest caveat: the Phở Bằng name has been reused across several Chinatown and Queens addresses over the years. Make sure you are at 157 Mott and not at something trading on the name.
See our best Chinatown restaurants
Đi Ăn Đi
Brooklyn’s bowl, and the reason it belongs on the Vietnamese page rather than only the phở one: this is a proper dinner room, not a noodle counter. It carries on both The Infatuation’s phở guide and its 16 Best Vietnamese Restaurants guide, and it is named in Resy’s guide to Vietnamese-American food in New York — three separate editorial nods, which is more than most rooms in this category get. The picks are the phở and the chả giò. The honest caveat: nobody publishes a price or a set of hours for it, and it reads as a going-out restaurant. Do not send someone here expecting a $14 lunch — send them for dinner.
See our Greenpoint happy hours
Vietnamese coffee
Phin coffee, salt coffee and one room that runs to 2am. See best coffee in NYC.
Lê Phin
Kim Lê grew up in Vietnam and worked as a professional coffee quality grader before opening this, after a visit to a relative’s coffee farm in Bảo Lộc. That is not a marketing origin story; it is the reason the phin coffee here tastes sourced rather than merely brewed. Traditional Vietnamese iced coffee, a pandan latte, and pandan cakes to go with them. The Infatuation named it among 15 Great Asian-Owned Coffee And Tea Shops In NYC. The honest caveat: it is a small coffee shop, not a restaurant — no food beyond pastries — and no hours are published anywhere, so do not cross town for it without a phone call. More in our guide to the best coffee in NYC.
See our best coffee in NYC
After Eden
The only all-day Vietnamese coffee-to-cocktails room in the city: 10am to 2am, Tuesday through Saturday, switching service as the day goes. Opened in 2026 on Orchard, serving cà phê phin and cà phê muối — salt coffee, which is the order — plus a jackfruit banana latte with oat milk. The honest caveat, and it is the reason there is no deal on this card: Time Out reported in April 2026 that a happy hour would be announced “in the coming months.” As of 21 August 2026, nothing has been published — four months of coming soon. We will add it the day they post one. The Sunday and Monday hours in the only listing we can find look like partial data, so treat Tuesday to Saturday as the reliable window.
See our Lower East Side happy hours
NYC Vietnamese food: FAQ
How much does a banh mi cost in NYC?
Between $8 and $15.50 for a standard sandwich. The cheapest verified is Ba Xuyen’s #1 special in Sunset Park at $8; the most expensive standard sandwiches are at Xe May on St Marks Place, where the Hog, the Sidecar, the Lam’bretta, the DUKE and the vegetarian Mean Green all run $15.50. In between: Little Thanh Da at $9, Banh Mi Co Ut at $9.25, Banh Mi Saigon’s cold cut special at $9.50, and Com Tam Ninh Kieu in the Bronx at $10.95. The outright most expensive is the $28 banh mi chao at Phe, but that is a weekend-only skillet with unlimited refills, not a sandwich you order off the counter.
Where is the best banh mi in NYC?
Sunset Park, and specifically 8th Avenue. Ba Xuyen at 4222 8th Ave is the $8 benchmark – The Infatuation leads its banh mi guide with the #1 there. Fourteen blocks up at 5624 8th Ave, Little Thanh Da has been, in Robert Sietsema’s March 2025 words, slinging what are probably the city’s best banh mi for over 20 years, at $9. Both are takeout counters with no seating and no published hours. The price gap in this city is geographic rather than qualitative: the two cheapest sandwiches on our list are the two that critics rank highest, and the $15.50 sandwiches are in the East Village.
Do any Vietnamese restaurants in NYC have a happy hour?
Not one of the eighteen we verified publishes a happy hour with both days and a time window. Two come close and both need a phone call. Saigon Social at 172 Orchard Street carries a dedicated Happy Hour section on its own website that lists no days, no window and no prices. After Eden at 162 Orchard Street was reported by Time Out in April 2026 to have a happy hour coming in the following months, and as of August 2026 nothing has been announced. Any guide printing a Vietnamese happy hour in NYC right now is inventing it.
Which Vietnamese restaurants in NYC have closed?
Three worth knowing, all of which competing guides still recommend. Sau Voi at 101 Lafayette Street is closed – Yelp, Time Out and Foursquare all mark it closed, and yet Time Out’s own live best-banh-mi guide still lists it. Nicky’s Vietnamese Sandwiches and Banh Mi 172 are both gone as well. One more to treat carefully: The Infatuation lists a $9 banh mi dac biet at VPho and Pizzeria in the Bronx, but the restaurant’s own site publishes a purely Italian menu with no Vietnamese food on it at all. Call before you go.
What should I order at a Vietnamese restaurant besides pho?
Each dish has one clear best answer in this city. Com tam, or broken rice, goes to Com Tam Ninh Kieu in Kingsbridge, where the house special is $18.95 and the restaurant is named after the dish. Bun dau mam tom – house-made tofu, pork belly and sticky-rice sausage with fermented shrimp paste – goes to Mam on Forsyth Street, the highest-rated Vietnamese room in the city. Bun cha goes to Saigon Social on the Lower East Side. Cha ca la vong, the turmeric catfish, is at Banh Anh Em in the East Village. And bun thit nuong, grilled pork over vermicelli, is at Thanh Da in Sunset Park – the parent shop, not the takeout offshoot.
Last updated: August 2026. Prices and hours change – confirm with the venue before you go. Spot something out of date? Let us know.
