editorial

Guests enjoying teppanyaki at fine Japanese restaurant Tingara during the Artisan Stories food festival.

Da Nang Food Story &#8211; InterContinental Danang Tingara Restaurant Teppanyaki Hero

Words by James Louie 
September 25, 2026
A new food festival serves as a springboard for exploring Da Nang’s rich food scene.
<figure id="attachment_163492" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-163492" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-163492 size-full" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-La-Maison-1888-Chefs-and-Gnocchi.jpg" alt="Chefs Christian Le Squer (left) and Jean-Louis Angulo alongside a dish at La Maison 1888." width="1200" height="800" srcset="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-La-Maison-1888-Chefs-and-Gnocchi.jpg 1200w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-La-Maison-1888-Chefs-and-Gnocchi-300x200.jpg 300w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-La-Maison-1888-Chefs-and-Gnocchi-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-La-Maison-1888-Chefs-and-Gnocchi-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-163492" class="wp-caption-text">Left to right: La Maison 1888’s chef Christian Le Squer (left) and chef de cuisine Jean-Louis Angulo; potato gnocchi in basil broth at the same restaurant. (Photos: James Louie (left); Courtesy of InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort)</figcaption></figure>
As weekday dinners go, this is no brisk after-work meal. It’s a sultry June evening and fairy lights twinkle over communal tables on a forest-fringed beach outside Da Nang, central <a href="https://destinasian.com/travel-guide/vietnam" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Vietnam</a>’s largest city. Beneath a darkening sky streaked pink and orange, a DJ spins laid-back beats as the South China Sea laps lazily against the shore. Soon, a procession of sharing plates emerges from the nearby Italian restaurant Terra Mare. First there’s burrata with cherry tomatoes and a salad of organic Da Lat produce in a zingy passion-fruit dressing. Then comes prosciutto and arugula pizzas, spaghetti all’arrabbiata, and seafood platters headlined by meaty Nha Trang lobsters. By the time the Australian wagyu steak hits the table, I can barely take another bite.
<h2>Artisan Stories: Where Art Meets Gastronomy</h2>
This alfresco feast marks the inaugural edition of Artisan Stories, an annual six-day festival of art and gastronomy at the <a href="https://www.danang.intercontinental.com/?DestinAsian" target="_blank" rel="noopener">InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort</a> (from US$508), where 189 rooms, suites, and villas cascade down a jungled hillside to the sea. Tingara, the property’s Japanese omakase restaurant, is hosting a series of six-hands dinners. There’s also a bar takeover by mixologist Ohm Supapat from Bangkok’s <a href="https://destinasian.com/bangkok-nightlife-funkytown" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Funkytown</a>—his savory som tam cock tail tastes just like its namesake spiced papaya salad.
The art component comes from <a href="https://destinasian.com/travel-guide/thailand/bangkok" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bangkok</a>-based architect Bill Bensley, who gave the resort its whimsical design and exhibits his paintings at an on-site gallery. Thirty-two of his newest artworks are up for auction at the festival, with the proceeds donated to wildlife conservation initiatives. All depict the critically endangered red-shanked douc langur, shy yet charismatic primates that roam the treetops around the resort and inhabit the surrounding nature reserve. “I want people to understand they’re not just fluffy toys,” Bensley says. “They’re real beings with real lives.”
<figure id="attachment_163493" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-163493" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-163493 size-full" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-Resort-Accommodation-with-Beach.jpg" alt="InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort overlooking its private beach." width="1200" height="800" srcset="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-Resort-Accommodation-with-Beach.jpg 1200w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-Resort-Accommodation-with-Beach-300x200.jpg 300w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-Resort-Accommodation-with-Beach-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-Resort-Accommodation-with-Beach-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-163493" class="wp-caption-text">Accommodations at InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort step down a hillside to a private beach. (Photo: James Louie)</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_163491" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-163491" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-163491 size-full" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-Beachside-Food-Kiosks.jpg" alt="Beachside food stalls at the Artisan Stories food festival in Da Nang." width="1200" height="800" srcset="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-Beachside-Food-Kiosks.jpg 1200w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-Beachside-Food-Kiosks-300x200.jpg 300w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-Beachside-Food-Kiosks-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-Beachside-Food-Kiosks-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-163491" class="wp-caption-text">Beachside food stalls at the resort during the Artisan Stories food festival. (Courtesy of InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort)</figcaption></figure>
<h2>Inside Da Nang Food Scene: Mì Quảng and Bánh Xèo</h2>
Seeing a family of douc langurs snacking on the leaves of sea almond trees below the lobby, I’m re minded I have some foraging of my own to do on a street food tour with a few other guests. Our guide, cookbook author Helen Le of the website and You Tube channel Helen’s Recipes, starts us off with a local breakfast of mi Quang, which she describes as half noodle soup, half noodle salad.
“If I had to eat one dish for the rest of my life, it would be mi Quang,” she declares. “From morning to night, you can have different toppings.” Her pick is fish and frog, but alas, the latter has run out by the time we arrive at no-frills Mi Quang Nhung (135 Nguyen Tat Thanh) in the downtown Hai Chau district. I can’t wait to slurp up the silken handcut noodles with turmeric-marinated pieces of snakehead fish—but first, we’re advised to add greens, sliced banana blossom, and a squeeze of fresh lime. Flavored with cold-pressed peanut oil and more full-bodied than pho, the broth has chive-like notes from a small wild allium called nén.
Then it’s onto a street-side stall named Banh Mi Ga Co Chi (48 Phan Dinh Phung) for crisp mini-baguette sandwiches filled with pork floss, pickled papaya and cucumber, and homemade mayo. From the counter, Helen also picks out a jar of pickled pig’s ear for us to try at our next stop, the flagship store of Da Nang–born specialty coffee chain Trinh Ca Phe (25 Pham Hong Thai). Using freshly ground robusta beans from Trinh’s own farm in the highlands of Dak Lak, we’re guided through the precise choreography of making Vietnamese drip coffee with condensed milk.
<figure id="attachment_163498" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-163498" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-163498" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-Wrapping-Banh-Xeo-and-Trinh-Ca-Phe-Coffee-Shop.jpg" alt="Lunchtime at Banh Xeo Ba Duong; Trinh Ca Phe’s flagship outlet." width="1200" height="800" srcset="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-Wrapping-Banh-Xeo-and-Trinh-Ca-Phe-Coffee-Shop.jpg 1200w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-Wrapping-Banh-Xeo-and-Trinh-Ca-Phe-Coffee-Shop-300x200.jpg 300w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-Wrapping-Banh-Xeo-and-Trinh-Ca-Phe-Coffee-Shop-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-Wrapping-Banh-Xeo-and-Trinh-Ca-Phe-Coffee-Shop-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-163498" class="wp-caption-text">Left to right: Lunchtime at Banh Xeo Ba Duong; Trinh Ca Phe’s flagship outlet. (Photos: James Louie)</figcaption></figure>
The tour’s finale takes place at the end of an unassuming alleyway, where Banh Xeo Ba Duong (280/23 Hoang Dieu) has turned out the city’s best stuffed rice pancakes for the past four decades. Over a spread of minced pork skewers, fresh herbs and leaves, and crispy banh xeo pancakes loaded with beef and shrimp, Helen shows us how to wrap the ingredients in a sheet of rice paper, before dipping the roll into a rich, creamy sauce containing liver and minced pork.
<h2>Michelin-Starred Dining at La Maison 1888</h2>
A different kind of culinary magic awaits back at the resort. Artisan Stories’ headline event is a two-night collaboration between Bensley and Christian Le Squer, who oversees La Maison 1888, the <a href="https://www.danang.intercontinental.com/dining/la-maison-1888/?DestinAsian">InterContinental’s French fine-dining restaurant</a>. The legendary chef behind three-Michelin-starred Le Cinq in Paris, Le Squer has created a five-course tasting menu to match the vivid colors of Bensley’s new paintings, some of which are displayed at the restaurant’s checker board-tiled terrace.
That terrace is also where we dine at a long curving table draped in green velvet cloth. An opening salvo of saffron-infused potato gnocchi, soft as soufflé, is bathed in a basil broth. Plated like a dessert, the vegetable course of roasted white asparagus features a cold almond-flavored quenelle. Wagyu from Japan’s Yaeyama Islands comes dressed in a sheet of sundried tomato jelly, the meat’s richness offset by sliced watermelon and cucumber. My favorite? The Hokkaido turbot with miso meunière, spheres of herbaceous watercress gel, and grated pear with vinegar shaped into a sorbet; a glass of dry white Chapoutier marsanne from the Rhône Valley makes for a sublime pairing.
Polishing off a dessert that recasts Irish coffee as a meringue-coated omelette norvégienne, I can see why La Maison 1888 has maintained its Michelin star for the third straight year. But the restaurant has set its sights even higher. Chef de cuisine Jean Louis Angulo is working toward a second Michelin star, while Le Squer feels it’s high time to update the dining room, which opened in 2012. “Do you still wear the same clothes as you did 15 years ago?” he asks brightly.
<figure id="attachment_163496" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-163496" style="width: 1800px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-163496" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-Tingara-Restaurant-Teppanyaki-Large.jpg" alt="Guests enjoying teppanyaki at fine Japanese restaurant Tingara during the Artisan Stories food festival." width="1800" height="1200" srcset="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-Tingara-Restaurant-Teppanyaki-Large.jpg 1800w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-Tingara-Restaurant-Teppanyaki-Large-300x200.jpg 300w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-Tingara-Restaurant-Teppanyaki-Large-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-Tingara-Restaurant-Teppanyaki-Large-768x512.jpg 768w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-Tingara-Restaurant-Teppanyaki-Large-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-InterContinental-Danang-Tingara-Restaurant-Teppanyaki-Large-1568x1045.jpg 1568w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1800px) 100vw, 1800px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-163496" class="wp-caption-text">Guests enjoying teppanyaki at fine Japanese restaurant Tingara during the Artisan Stories food festival. (Courtesy of InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort)</figcaption></figure>
<h2>Nén Danang and the Future of Vietnamese Cuisine</h2>
Change and evolution are recurring themes on my final evening in Vietnam, when I head back into town to meet Helen and her younger sister, <a href="https://destinasian.com/editorial/where-a-chef-eats-in-da-nang" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Summer</a>, the chef-owner of progressive Vietnamese restaurant <a href="https://restaurantnen.com/?DestinAsian" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nén Danang</a>.
“When we were kids, the beach side of Da Nang was rural—there were no bridges so you had to cross the Han River on a ferry,” Helen recalls. Taking up two connected plots within sight of the Han, Nén Farm grows 70 percent of the vegetables, herbs, and flowers used at Summer’s restaurant right across the street, underlining the hyperlocal approach of her cooking. “We’re trying to prove that there’s so much more to Vietnamese ingredients and cuisine and culture that even Vietnamese people know,” Summer explains.
Her latest tasting menu, Time, took four years to develop and is Nén Danang’s “craziest” and most ambitious yet. “You will taste time as an ingredient,” Summer assures me. Inside the dimly lit dining room, Helen picks up on cultural references I would never have recognized. A delicate durian-flavored broth poured over thinly sliced fresh veal reminds her of bo nhung dam, or beef poached in vinegar hot pot. She describes how dried rehmannia root is added to winter melon tea as a medicinal herb; Summer pairs it instead with steamed shrimp in a dainty roll topped with flying fish roe. Most subversive of all is a dish titled Heal. “To heal we have to get hurt. So we’re going to hurt you—with some spice,” our server says with a mischievous smile. We crack open a tuile of A Rieu chilies to find green peppercorn ice-cream with sea urchin and prawn; its lingering heat is tempered by a cooling clam broth cooked with osmanthus and coconut water. The food is so thoughtful and inventive we lose all sense of time. I might be flying out at dawn, but for now, I’m in no hurry to finish my last meal in Da Nang.
<figure id="attachment_163497" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-163497" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-163497" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-Nen-Danang-Dessert-and-Chef-Summer-with-Helen.jpg" alt="Nipa palm nectar ice-cream with popcorn mousse at Nén Danang; Summer (left) and Helen Le." width="1200" height="800" srcset="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-Nen-Danang-Dessert-and-Chef-Summer-with-Helen.jpg 1200w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-Nen-Danang-Dessert-and-Chef-Summer-with-Helen-300x200.jpg 300w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-Nen-Danang-Dessert-and-Chef-Summer-with-Helen-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Da-Nang-Food-Story-Nen-Danang-Dessert-and-Chef-Summer-with-Helen-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-163497" class="wp-caption-text">Left to right: Nipa palm nectar ice-cream with popcorn mousse at Nén Danang; Summer (left) and Helen Le outside the same restaurant. (Photos: Courtesy of Nén Danang; James Louie)</figcaption></figure>
This article originally appeared in the <a href="https://subscription.destinasian.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">August/September 2026</a> print issue of DestinAsian magazine (“All in Good Taste”). Buy a single issue or subscribe <a href="https://subscription.destinasian.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.

Guests enjoying teppanyaki at Tingara during the Artisan Stories festival in Da Nang

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