In the northern Vietnamese port city of Hai Phong, a market eatery run by an owner whose face looks just like French national-team forward Kylian Mbappé shot to fame off the back of a social media video. The buzz began in early June 2026 with a video of a customer jokingly ordering, “Mbappé, one offal porridge to go.” According to reports from VnExpress and others, views topped 1.3 million, and people even came from Hanoi, Nam Dinh, and Bac Giang just to check out his face. Hai Phong isn’t as known to Japanese as Da Nang or Hoi An, but it’s a city about two hours by car from Hanoi and a gateway to Cat Ba Island and Ha Long Bay. Knowing about this bowl as a candidate for a “little detour” on your next trip could make for an interesting evening.
A market night eatery becomes a line-out-the-door shop off a single video
The person behind the buzz is Nguyen Van Thanh, 31. At Mep Market (chợ Mép) in Tu Ky commune, Hai Phong, he runs an eatery that opens only in the evening with his partner Nguyen Cong Tuan (33). Hours are from 5 p.m. to around 10:30 p.m. By day he caters for local banquets, and at night he serves regional dishes centered on offal congee (cháo lòng) in a corner of the market—a downtown double-cropping style. It opened in early 2025. Originally it was a perfectly ordinary eatery frequented by locals who came to the market.
The turning point was Thanh cutting his hair short in the summer of 2025. On top of already sharp features and a tanned complexion, the short hair was added, and customers started saying he "looks like Mbappé." A video someone shot of an ordering scene spread on social media, and he became known overnight as "Vietnam's Mbappé." Now a situation has emerged where people gather aiming first at the owner's face, ahead of the taste itself.
Why "looks like" Mbappe - not Mbappe himself - went viral
Thanh is not a footballer, nor is he related to Mbappé by blood. The resemblance is in his features, hairstyle, and skin tone, and the gap of “not a high-end restaurant but a market offal-porridge stall” makes it land. Ladling out a humble Vietnamese bowl with the face of a global star — that gap was the core of the video’s appeal. VnExpress reports that, timed to the 2026 World Cup season, there’s even talk of shooting videos on the theme “what if Mbappé lived in Vietnam.” Coinciding with a period of rising football fever also helped it spread.
In Vietnam, there's fertile ground for market eateries and GrabFood shops to draw a rush of attention from some small trigger. There are cases where an unknown shop advances to the finals of an online voting contest, and the speed at which a humble bowl around town goes viral is beyond anything in Japan.A GrabFood promotion where one order equals one vote sends a neighborhood eatery to the finalsEven looking at that, you can see how seamlessly Vietnam's dining-out culture connects with social media.
Knowing Hai Phong's "porridge culture" makes this shop more interesting
Thanh’s mainstay, offal porridge (cháo lòng), is rice porridge cooked in a broth of simmered pork offal, a homey dish found all over Vietnam. But Hai Phong is known especially as a “porridge town,” and locally there are several signature styles.
| Types of congee | Characteristics |
|---|---|
| cháo lòng (offal congee) | A staple simmered in pork-offal broth. The mainstay of Thanh's shop |
| cháo cay (spicy porridge) | A Hai Phong specialty. A port-town taste accented with chili and fried dough sticks (quẩy) |
| cháo khoái | A greenish congee made by finely grinding rice and cooking it with bone-in meat and vegetables |
In other words, behind this shop's buzz lies a foundation of "Hai Phong = a city of cheap, tasty congee." Even if you visit for the face, you end up touching the local congee culture. From a travel view, the buzz is merely the entrance; the real draw is the localness of this city's food.
Voices local customers send to an owner who turns down advertising
What stands out is that Thanh turns down media collaboration projects and commercial-advertising offers. The reason: "I want customers to stay for the quality of the product." It's a stance of not turning buzz into a one-off payday, but of continuing purely as an eatery.
Loosely rendering the reactions of locals and customers from reports and on-the-ground voices, the mood is roughly as follows.
- 'I came to see his face, but the congee was genuinely good — a double surprise'
- "It's likable that even after getting famous, he changed neither the price nor the taste"
- "I came all the way from Hanoi. It's just right as a conversation piece"
Not putting awards or fame out front, protecting the usual bowl - this pattern is often seen at popular Vietnamese shops. The one who mistook a Michelin notification for a scamThe Hanoi chicken pho shop that doesn’t display its certificatesoverlapping with that episode, the image of an owner who chooses 'everyday flavor over fame' oddly sticks with you when you encounter it on a trip.
If Japanese travelers work it in as a "detour"
Hai Phong is about 100 km east of Hanoi, roughly two hours by car or express bus. Since it's on the route out to Cat Ba Island and Ha Long Bay, you can stop by just by adding half a day to a "Hanoi + Ha Long Bay" itinerary. The talked-about shop is at Mep Market in Tu Ky commune, a local market not on the tourist map. It opens only after 5 p.m., so a realistic plan is city sightseeing at midday and the market's congee in the evening.
Market eateries are often cash-only, with prices at a very down-to-earth level in the tens of thousands of dong. Ten thousand dong is roughly a few tens of yen (around 1 yen ≈ 165 VND; rates fluctuate), so it's reassuring to nail down "how to get there" before your wallet. Since shops that go viral on social media turn over quickly too, checking the latest opening status before you visit helps you avoid a wasted trip. On how to enjoy chasing these "TikTok-born viral dishes" at your destination,The case of Hue’s fried rice cake banh ram it going viral in North Americais also a helpful reference.
The buzz is the entrance; the city's food is the point
The "owner who looks like Mbappé" angle is certainly catchy, but for practical travel value it's best used as "a reason to touch Hai Phong's congee culture." While you check out the face, get to know the port town's flavors of offal congee and spicy congee. Take home a bowl from an owner who protects his taste even to the point of turning down ads—both as a story and as real satisfaction. You can build a detour like that.
If you travel toward Hanoi and Ha Long Bay next, try allotting half a day to Hai Phong. Slurp a bowl of congee at the market's evening eatery and quietly check the owner's face. That alone lets you savor a "town atmosphere unique to that season" not found in guidebooks. First, start by checking the shop's latest hours and location on social media before visiting.
