Từ Hoa: the princess, the silk village and Tây Hồ’s densest run of restaurants

The princess who gave the street its name

Từ Hoa is named for a princess. Từ Hoa was a daughter of King Lý Thần Tông who left the palace to live at Nghi Tàm village and taught the people there to grow mulberry, raise silkworms and weave silk. The settlement she founded was Trại Tằm Tang, the mulberry and silkworm camp, which by the Lê dynasty had become Nghi Tàm, one of the best-known villages of the old capital. Kim Liên Pagoda, tied to her story, is eighty-four metres from the street.

Note the spelling. It is Từ Hoa, not Tú Hoa. The street runs from alley 11 Xuân Diệu to alley 1 Âu Cơ, about a kilometre, between 8.5 and 11.5 metres wide.

One kilometre, and more restaurants than anywhere else in Tây Hồ

What sits on it now is the highest concentration of restaurants of any street in this set. Within thirty metres of the road: Hey Pelo, Hanoi Taco Bar, Home Kitchen, Rasm Modern Indian, TOTAM, The Moose and Roo, Izakaya Matsuki, The Sushi Club, India Palace, Chops, Valhalla Grill, Doppio Ristretto, Milk and Honey, TAYTA, PingPong, The Oasis supermarket and Saint Honoré bakery. The Sheraton and the InterContinental Westlake are both within seventy metres, and the Dusit Le Palais Tu Hoa opened here in May 2025 with 207 rooms overlooking the lake.

Who it suits

That density is the street’s appeal and its honest drawback. If you want to walk out of your door into eight cuisines, this is the address. If you want a Vietnamese neighbourhood, a Hanoi renter’s blunt assessment of this part of Tây Hồ applies: “some parts of Tay Ho barely even have any Vietnamese food”.

Upgrades around West Lake, 2026 to 2030

Hanoi has approved an upgrade programme for the Tây Hồ ward, which covers the West Lake area. Fifty projects are listed for 2026 to 2030, across more than 96 hectares, and 46 of them are publicly funded. They range from roads and schools to parks and improvements to the lake environment. The largest single project is the new Tứ Liên Bridge. Several lakeside streets are named, including Đặng Thai Mai.

The 2026 to 2030 window applies to the programme as a whole. Timings for individual projects are not published, so no one can honestly say which month a given street will be finished, and we will not guess. Ask us what is happening on the street you are considering, and we will tell you what we know and what we do not.

On this street the approved list names a lakeside route near Kim Liên Pagoda, running to the Thắng Lợi Hotel.

We asked our team in Hanoi when the works will be finished. The answer, in August 2026, was that it is impossible to say with confidence. That is not us dodging the question. It is the most reliable answer there is, from somebody who lives in Hanoi and knows these streets, and it means that anyone who hands you a firm completion date is guessing. So the question worth asking is not when the works end. It is what is happening outside the address you are considering, and that is a question we can answer.

Ask us: what works are happening on this street right now, and what should I expect outside this address over the next twelve months?