Bikini Bottom Express has the kind of name you'd pick as a joke and then be stuck with. In this case it stuck because it worked. Eight years after its first plate, the restaurant runs three diners in Da Nang and one in Hoi An. Its menu draws on California, Montreal and Vietnam, and it describes itself as Vietnam's "only real California style diner and smash burger joint." That's its own claim, and an easy one to argue about over fries.

A hostel breakfast that got out of hand

The restaurant's own history starts in 2018 with a small Da Nang hostel called The Light House. Its founders, Doãn and Alex, were 23 and 27 at the time. Hungry guests kept asking for food, so the pair started cooking breakfasts and community dinners. In their own words, the food was "questionable looking", the cooks had "very little clue what they were actually doing", and people liked it anyway.

The hostel kitchen became a restaurant. It first traded as La Terrasse, then as Somewhere Over The Rainbow. In 2019 a second restaurant opened in Hoi An and needed a name. The owners went with Bikini Bottom, after SpongeBob's undersea hometown, and rebranded.

The menu's Canadian streak comes from co-founder Alex Le, a Vietnamese Montrealer. The restaurant says he died in 2022, and it keeps his poutine on the menu in his memory. Dzo! Vietnam, an expat food blog that wrote up the Trần Phú branch in April 2026, likewise describes the place as co-founded by a Montreal native who wanted to bring North American diner food to central Vietnam.

The restaurant says it has served more than 1.5 million plates since 2018. It also says it was "listed in the Asia Top 80" in 2021, 2022 and 2023, without saying whose list that was. Neither claim could be independently checked.

What's on the menu

The burger is the reason most people come. According to the menu, patties are 80/20 Australian beef, ground in house, smashed on a flat-top and served on a brioche butter bun baked in house. Prices are in Vietnamese dong:

  • Bikini Bottom Burger (95,000): the namesake, a double cheeseburger with sautéed onions, house pickles and dijonnaise.
  • Classic single (75,000): the cheapest way in.
  • Classic Double Double (100,000) and The Baconator (125,000).
  • Big City Boi (140,000): bacon, egg, avocado and two kinds of onion.
  • Jammin' Jalapeño (165,000): the top of the range, with aged English cheddar, bacon and onion jam.

A fries combo adds 40,000 dong.

The "almost smash" section covers what isn't beef: a beer-battered fried chicken burger, a 12-hour Canadian pork shoulder sandwich and a pulled jackfruit burger, Jack in a Bun (115,000 dong), for vegetarians. Then there's the "Almost Poutine": double-fried fries, brown gravy and mozzarella. It's mozzarella because, the menu says, that's what was in the fridge, and cheese curds are hard to find in Da Nang. The Classic Montreal costs 115,000 dong; loaded versions run to 150,000.

Breakfast runs all day. The menu lists:

  • Grand Slam (175,000): eggs, bacon, sausage, hash, pancakes and toast;
  • eggs Benedict: variations at 120,000 to 165,000 dong;
  • pancakes, smoothie bowls and breakfast muffins.

Some sauces are fermented in house, and some beef offcuts come from the owners' own steakhouse, Missteak. The site also mentions a "Bikini brewed beer", and every branch runs a daily 5–7 p.m. happy hour: buy two drinks, get one free, same drink only.

Where to find it

The restaurant's site lists three Da Nang branches and one in Hoi An:

  • An Thượng: 45–47 An Thượng 2, Ngũ Hành Sơn. Open 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. In the middle of the An Thượng expat strip, a short walk from My Khe Beach.
  • Trần Phú: 154 Trần Phú, Hải Châu. Open 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Beside the pink Da Nang Cathedral, the branch Dzo! Vietnam photographed.
  • Mai Thúc Lân: 116 Mai Thúc Lân, Ngũ Hành Sơn. Open 8 a.m. to 10:45 p.m.
  • Hoi An: 115 Trần Quang Khải, on the riverside.

Where it fits

Da Nang's Western casual-dining scene is crowded, particularly around An Thượng. Bikini Bottom's niche is the smash burger plus breakfast-all-day combination, at prices well below hotel restaurants. The jackfruit burger and the run of vegetarian breakfasts give non-meat-eaters more than a token option.

For more of the city's burgers, from a 75,000-dong single to a foie gras burger, see our Da Nang burger guide. For context on the neighborhood, see our look at Da Nang's night-time economy in Hải Châu and An Thượng.

Sources

This story was compiled by the Da Nang Voice news desk from the published sources listed above. Facts, figures and quotes are attributed to those sources; Da Nang Voice did not conduct interviews for it unless the text says so. Corrections are dated and noted at the top of the story. Read our corrections policy. Spotted an error? Tell us.