Kao.Piak.Sen
Bib Gourmand 2026

🔄 Last checked 2 Jul 2026 · details and hours can change — check the venue before you go

Ask about breakfast in Udon Thani and kao piak sen — Vietnamese-style rice noodle soup — is the first answer any local will give you, and Kao.Piak.Sen is one of the restaurants that tells this story best. The restaurant's beginnings trace back to a Vietnamese grandmother who fled to settle in Udon Thani during the war, then opened a kao piak sen restaurant in 1978 (2521 BE), selling continuously for more than 46 years until it became a fixture for the whole city. This kind of story isn't a coincidence — Udon Thani is one of the Thai provinces where the Vietnamese community settled most heavily, so Vietnamese food became woven into everyday life for people in Udon until the two are inseparable. A hot bowl of kao piak sen in the morning is genuinely this city's culture, not a dish invented for tourists.

What makes this restaurant special is the third generation — a grandchild who works as a designer decided to come back and take over, rebranding the restaurant from a single shophouse unit into three units in a Modern Vietnam style, done entirely in green tile. Under the concept of All Day Vietnamese, meaning you can eat Vietnamese food any time from morning to evening, that green-tiled facade is exactly what MICHELIN singled out for praise, because it gives a nearly half-century-old kao piak sen restaurant new life without losing its roots. The recipes are still entirely the grandmother's, and the result is a Bib Gourmand tag that has continued through to the 2026 guide, with the restaurant's popularity carrying it to branches in Bangkok too, at Gaysorn Amarin and Ekkamai — but if you want the original, Udon Thani is the only place to get it.

The dish you have to order is kao piak sen, soft and chewy rice noodles in a pork bone broth simmered for as long as 8 hours, giving the mellow, fragrant broth MICHELIN wrote about — slurping it down on a cool morning is genuine Udon Thani happiness. Follow it with pak mor yuan (Vietnamese steamed rice-flour dumplings) or banh bot loc filled with shrimp and minced pork, spicy and another dish MICHELIN called out for praise — thin, soft steamed wrappers packed tight with filling, eaten with dipping sauce, and you understand exactly why this restaurant is full of regulars every morning. Finish with kaeng sen, another standout on the menu. All of this starts at just 60 THB a bowl — guide-book quality at rice-and-curry prices is exactly what Bib Gourmand means, and this restaurant delivers it on every plate.