How We Rank Hoi An Restaurants — Our Method

This is the honest bit most "best restaurants in Hoi An" lists skip. Here is exactly how the ranking is built, what data goes in, and where the limits are.

The data behind the Hoi An ranking

We start from the public ratings of the two review platforms with the deepest coverage of Hoi An: Google and TripAdvisor. For each restaurant we record its star rating and its review count on each platform, taken from a snapshot in July 2026. Across the 160 restaurants listed, that's 176,991 reviews.

We originally intended to add a third, local-facing source. In practice, reliable structured data for Hoi An wasn't available at the quality bar we hold, so we rank on Google and TripAdvisor and are transparent about it: 34 restaurants have enough reviews on both platforms to be cross-checked; the rest are shown with their single available source, clearly labelled.

Bayesian weighting — why a 5.0 with 8 reviews doesn't win

A raw star average is easy to game and easy to misread: a place with three glowing reviews shows 5.0 and leapfrogs a beloved institution sitting at 4.7 across three thousand. We correct for this with a Bayesian prior: every rating is pulled toward a sensible baseline (a prior mean of 4.45 across roughly 150 "phantom" reviews) until real review volume earns its way past it. A restaurant needs both a high rating and enough reviews to rise.

The corroboration adjustment

A score you can see confirmed on two independent platforms is more trustworthy than one visible on a single site. So after blending, we apply a small multiplier: ×0.99 when two platforms agree, ×0.94 when only one platform has the data. It's a gentle nudge, not a hammer — but it means single-source scores never quite match a corroborated one, which is the honest ordering.

Hidden gems vs tourist traps

Because Google's audience is far broader than TripAdvisor's tourist-leaning one — and because TripAdvisor ratings run slightly higher on average — the gap between the two is itself informative. We centre that gap on the Hoi An norm (-0.02) and flag restaurants that diverge beyond it: local hidden gems and tourist-leaning spots. Full detail on that page.

What about Michelin?

The MICHELIN Guide expanded to Da Nang in 2025 (one star, one green star, four Bib Gourmands and three Selected restaurants). As of this snapshot, it has not yet rated a single restaurant in Hoi An — even though Hoi An became administratively part of Da Nang in the July 2025 reorganisation. We don't award or imply Michelin status to any Hoi An restaurant, because none holds it. Until the guide arrives, this transparent data ranking is the most complete picture available. When Michelin does reach Hoi An, we'll add a verified badge layer.

What we deliberately don't do

We don't accept payment for ranking position — ever. We don't invent ratings, review counts or awards. We don't publish thin opinion filler. Restaurants can't buy their way up the table; that firewall is the whole point of the site. The ranking updates monthly as fresh review data comes in, and we keep each month's snapshot so we can show movement over time.

Ratings are © Google and TripAdvisor and are used here for factual comparison. Our composite score and divergence index are our own analysis, published under CC BY 4.0 — see the open dataset.