Chả Cá Thắng in Hà Nội in Vietnam has no menus because it specializes in only one local dish for which it is known: Chả cá Lã Vọng or Chả cá Thắng Long. The restaurant received good reviews and was within walking distance of where we were staying; so we decided to try it.
Chả Cá Thắng in Hà Nội in Vietnam. Restaurant Review.
Nobody was inside when we entered the small restaurant. If the sliding glass door of the entrance to the restaurant was not already opened, we would have thought that the restaurant was closed at that hour. We had to call out for someone to appear — after which we were seated at a table.
The ingredients for this dish were promptly brought out and placed on the table: fresh dill, scallions, peanuts, limes, fish sauce, rice noodles, sliced hot red chili peppers, and a pungent fermented shrimp paste called mắm tôm.
After a brick of wax was placed in the metal burner and lit, a pan of sorts was placed on the burner and filled with large pieces of cá lăng or hemibagrus — which is a type of catfish in Vietnam — that were marinated with such ingredients as turmeric, a type of ginger known as galangal, and fermented rice.
The server added the dill and scallions to the pan of fish and started mixing the ingredients with chopsticks. Even though he barely knew any English and we knew virtually no Vietnamese, we were able to understand his instructions on how to add the ingredients and then enjoy the dish, which was rather flavorful.
Final Boarding Call
Some people might call Chả Cá Thắng in Hà Nội in Vietnam a “hole in the wall” — but sometimes that is where some of the best food can be enjoyed. Chả Cá Thắng was not the restaurant that originally introduced Chả cá Lã Vọng to the public in 1871; but we enjoyed its interpretation of the dish, which did not seem to vary from the original recipe.
The food was fresh, filling, very good, and inexpensive, as the total cost of the meal for two people was ₫280,000 or Vietnamese dong, which converts to approximately $10.65 in United States dollars. Add ₫20,000 for a can of a choice of soft drinks such as Coca-Cola, which converts to approximately $0.76 in United States dollars…
…which means that we paid the equivalent of almost $12.20 for a meal with beverages for two people.
I recommend dining at Chả Cá Thắng, which seemed to be an authentic experience in Hà Nội.
Chả Cá Thắng
15B Ngô Văn Sở
Trần Hưng Đạo, Hoàn Kiếm, Hà Nội
Vietnam
+84 987 238 826
Operating Hours
10:30 in the morning through 10:00 in the evening, seven days per week.
Credit cards are not accepted for payment. Bring cash in Vietnamese dong.
All photographs ©2026 by Brian Cohen.
