The person behind the recommendations
Mai Trần, Hanoi food guide since 2015
Mai Trần has guided food tours in Hanoi since 2015. She grew up here, and she has spent the past decade walking international visitors through the Old Quarter's stalls, markets and family kitchens, more than 1,000 travellers by her own count.
Her walks pair tasting with story: which dishes define northern Vietnamese cooking, who has been frying them on the same corner for thirty years, and how to eat well without worrying about your stomach. She plans routes at an unhurried pace, watches hygiene closely, and would rather show you one perfect bowl of bun cha than ten forgettable stops.
On this site Mai does two jobs. The blog is hers: first-person accounts of the eating she actually does, dawn markets, bia hoi corners, the long hunt for a perfect banh mi. On the tour and guide pages her role is verification. She checks inclusions, meeting points, itineraries and cancellation terms against the operators' official GetYourGuide and Viator listings and against primary sources as of each publish date.
One honest line matters here: the nine bookable experiences featured on this site are run by their own operators, not by Mai. She reviews and verifies them as a working local guide who knows exactly what a good Hanoi food tour should deliver; she does not lead those departures.
Why trust her
- Hanoi local; professional food-tour guiding since 2015
- 1,000+ international travellers served, by her own count
- Specialist knowledge of street food, wet markets and northern Vietnamese culinary tradition
- A working guide's eye for pacing, hygiene and which stalls actually deserve your appetite
How the experiences are chosen
We start from what the platforms' own customers say. The nine experiences featured here are the most-reviewed, highest-rated food tours, classes and workshops currently bookable in Hanoi on GetYourGuide and Viator, sorted by review count within each style. Nothing is featured because it pays better; the ranking rule is public and boring on purpose.
Sourcing rules
Ratings and review counts are quoted from the live listings and rechecked rather than remembered. Street-food prices are quoted as ranges in dong from recent published sources. Rules that change, like Train Street access or visa policy, are verified against official and primary sources before they appear, and written as current-but-changing rather than eternal. Where we cannot verify something, we say so or leave it out. We never invent a number, a quote, or an experience.
How the site makes money
Disclosed affiliate links to GetYourGuide and Viator, explained in plain language on the disclosure page. You pay the same either way.
Questions, corrections, or a stall we should know about? Email us; a real person reads it. You can also start where most readers do: what to eat in Hanoi, or the nine experiences compared.