Banh Xeo in Hoi An: Why Ours Comes With Liver Sauce, Not Fish Sauce

Last updated: 6 September 2026 — written by Fin, a local guide in Hoi An.

The short answer

Banh xeo is a rice-flour pancake, fried until the edges shatter and folded over shrimp, pork belly and bean sprouts. The name is the sound it makes — xèo — when the batter hits hot oil. But the version you eat in Hoi An is not the one on most Vietnamese restaurant menus abroad, and the difference that matters is not the pancake at all. It is the sauce.

• Size: about the width of your hand, not the 30 cm dinner plate you get in the Mekong Delta
• Batter: rice soaked overnight then ground, turmeric for the colour, and no coconut milk
• The sauce: nước lèo — bean soy sauce stewed with pork liver and ground peanuts, not the sweet fish-sauce dip
• Price: 20,000–40,000 VND a cake (roughly $0.80–$1.60)
• How you eat it: with your hands, wrapped in rice paper, never with chopsticks
• When it is best: the rainy season and the cool months, October to February

Why Hoi An banh xeo is not the banh xeo you have eaten before

If you have had banh xeo in Saigon or in a Vietnamese restaurant at home, you have eaten the southern one: a wide, pale, floppy crepe with coconut milk in the batter, folded over a generous pile of filling and cut into wedges.

Ours is a different dish wearing the same name. It is small enough to sit in your palm, the crust is thicker and much crisper, and there is no coconut milk anywhere near it. You get one shrimp and one slice of pork belly per cake, a handful of bean sprouts, and that is the whole filling. Two people will eat six or eight between them.

Hoi An / central	Mekong / southern
Size	Hand-sized, about 15 cm	Up to 30 cm across
Crust	Thicker, crisp all the way through	Thin, softer, chewier at the centre
Coconut milk in batter	No	Yes
Filling	One shrimp, one slice of pork belly, bean sprouts	Shrimp, pork, bean sprouts, often mung bean
Dipping sauce	Nước lèo — pork liver and peanut	Nước chấm — sweet, sour fish sauce
Eaten with	Rice paper, Tra Que herbs, unripe banana, star fruit	Lettuce and herbs, sometimes rice paper
Price	20,000–40,000 VND per cake	Usually sold per plate

The sauce is the whole argument

This is the part I most enjoy watching guests react to. Everywhere else in Vietnam, banh xeo arrives with nước chấm — the clear, sweet-sour fish sauce with chilli and garlic floating in it.

In Hoi An you get nước lèo, and it looks wrong to a first-timer: thick, brown, slightly grainy, sitting in the bowl like a gravy. It is made from bean soy sauce stewed together with pork liver and finely ground peanuts, thickened with a spoon of rice flour until it reaches the consistency we call sềnh sệch — somewhere between a sauce and a paste.

Every shop guards its own version. The stall by the Ba Le well has been making the same recipe for over twenty years and will not discuss it, which in this town counts as a marketing strategy.

If you have been working through the town's other specialities — the cao lau that only exists inside the old city limits, or the white rose dumplings two families still fold by hand — you will recognise the pattern. Hoi An takes a dish that exists everywhere and changes one component completely.

How it is actually made

Stand at the pan for a few minutes before you sit down. It is worth it.

The rice is soaked in water until soft, then ground — the soaking is not optional, and getting the batter thickness right is the entire craft. Too thick and the cake comes out dry and tough. Too thin and it goes soft and sticks.

Then the part nobody expects: the cook greases the cast-iron pan with a spring-onion stalk dipped in peanut oil, wiping it round the surface like a brush. One shrimp goes in, one slice of pork belly, a ladle of batter — xèo — bean sprouts scattered on top, and a lid on for a few seconds to steam the sprouts while the base crisps. Then it is folded over like a half-moon and pushed onto your plate.

They are made continuously and eaten continuously. Nobody in Hoi An makes a stack of banh xeo and brings it over. A cake that has sat for five minutes has lost the only thing it had, which is why the good shops will not take a large order in advance and why the pan never stops on a busy evening. If you arrive to find a queue, that is the queue working as intended — you are waiting because your cakes have not been made yet.

How to eat it without getting it wrong

You do not use chopsticks. You do not use a fork. This is a hands dish, and the plate of rice paper and greens next to you is not a garnish — it is the cutlery.

1. Take one round of rice paper. If it is the dry kind, dip it in the water bowl for two seconds; if it is already soft, use it as is.
2. Lay down two or three leaves — lettuce, mint, perilla, Vietnamese basil.
3. Tear off half the pancake and put it on the herbs. Half, not the whole thing, or the roll will not close.
4. Add the sharp things: a slice of unripe banana, a sliver of star fruit, thin cucumber. These are what stop it feeling heavy.
5. Roll it, tuck the sides, dip one end into the nước lèo, and eat it in two bites.

The unripe banana and star fruit are the step travellers skip because they look unfamiliar. They are astringent and slightly sour, and they exist precisely to cut the fried pork fat. Skip them and by the fourth cake you will be full in a way you did not want to be.

The herbs, incidentally, mostly come up the road from Tra Que vegetable village, where they are grown in seaweed dredged out of the lagoon. That is why the mint in Hoi An tastes stronger than the mint you get elsewhere.

Where to eat it

Where	Address	Hours	Price
Bánh Xèo Hải Đảo	160 Lý Thái Tổ, Cẩm Châu	07:00–22:00	20,000–40,000 VND per cake
The stall by the Ba Le well	Off Phan Chu Trinh, in the alley	Late afternoon into evening	25,000–40,000 VND per portion

Both are a few minutes out of the tourist core, which is the point. Hải Đảo is the one I take guests to when they want to sit properly and order a mixed set; the Ba Le well stall is where you go if you want to eat standing up in an alley with a plastic stool and no menu.

Order banh xeo on its own and you have a snack. Order it as a set with ram — the small crisp fried rolls you can see in the photo above — and nem lụi, pork grilled on lemongrass skewers, and you have dinner. A full mixed set runs closer to 80,000–150,000 VND a head.

When to come for it

Banh xeo is cold-weather food here. Ask anyone local when they eat it and they will tell you the rainy season, or những ngày thời tiết se lạnh — the days when the air turns cool.

That is October through February, which is exactly the stretch most visitors are told to avoid. It is not a coincidence that it is also when the town is quietest and the food is best. There is more on that trade-off in the guide to the best time to visit Hoi An.

In July and August you can still get it, and it is still good. But you will be eating a hot fried thing in 35-degree heat, and the shop will be half empty, and both of those tell you something.

For what else is worth eating and when each thing appears, the Hoi An food guide covers the full list, and the street food timing guide has the hour-by-hour version.

Related planning notes: what to eat in Hoi An, cao lau guide, and Hoi An street food timing guide.

Eat it with someone who knows the shop

Half of eating well in this town is knowing which door to walk through and what to say once you are inside. On the Hoi An food tour I take guests to the family kitchens I actually eat at, order in Vietnamese, and explain what is in front of you before you have to guess.

Message me on WhatsApp and tell me when you are arriving. If you are still deciding what to see and eat, start with the private tours or read what else is worth eating in the Hoi An food guide.