Western

A cafe and bistro on a slope where the view belongs to the room rather than the terrace: upstairs the windows run the full height of the wall, with the roofs and hills behind them, fabric draped across the ceiling and tables lined up along the glass. The kitchen is European: breakfast and brunch until 4pm — a big English breakfast, shakshuka, eggs Benedict with salmon, ham and cheddar toasties. A separate page holds an entirely vegan menu that runs all day: bagels on their own buns with cashew cream cheese and carrot 'bacon', an English breakfast without a single animal product, a Buddha bowl.

A two-floor restaurant where Vietnamese and European dishes share one menu: local food sits next to eggs benedict, thin-crust pizza and cheesecake. It is neither a local-food spot people visit for bánh căn nor a purely European cafe — it works for a group where some want rice and others want breakfast.

Long-running and genuinely Italian — wood-fired pizza and hand-made ravioli, not a Vietnamese approximation. The pizza is what people come for: no allowance needed for being in Vietnam.

Useful when a child refuses local food, or when you just want a taste you know. The menu is the one you are used to, plus rice dishes and a fried chicken line.

Where you go when you have had enough rice: fish and chips, schnitzel, bangers and mash, burgers. Owned and run by an Australian, sport on the screens, English everywhere.

Food comes straight away, and it suits both the child who only eats familiar things and the adult who is simply hungry.

European breakfast and its own pastries: eggs your way, pancakes, French toast, croissants. Italian and Vietnamese coffee, ice cream.

Western food and a mountain view on the way up Robin Hill. Expats come here and settle in with their laptops: there are sockets by the tables and the internet runs at 35 Mbps.

The place Europeans end up at on the second morning: eggs any way you like, avocado toast, muesli and yoghurt, at local prices rather than tourist ones.

The expat living room. Australian-run brunch, burgers and pasta, and the third floor doubles as the nearest thing Da Lat has to a coworking space.

A bakery-cafe in a garden: through a wooden gate wrapped in greenery there is a yard, and at the back a room with a long display of pastry and desserts. Come for the cocoa and the sweet things rather than the coffee. Tea is brewed in pots for the table, so it also works for sitting out the rain in twos and fours.

A cafe that serves a proper European breakfast: sourdough toasties with avocado, salmon, prosciutto and halloumi, three kinds of eggs benedict, a full English with sausages, bacon, baked beans and hash brown, omelettes and croque monsieur. The building is green, with a striped awning and the name across the whole wall; inside, the ceiling is painted as a European street of brasseries and tiled roofs, the seats are striped, the bar holds an espresso machine and a juicer, and upstairs there is a glazed veranda with palms and a view over the roofs. Coffee comes both the Vietnamese way and off the machine, right down to a flat white and a yuzu espresso tonic.

Breakfast that looks like breakfast at home — British, American and Mexican plates — in a French villa on the quiet ridge above the centre.

Proper Italian — pizza and pasta cooked by people who care about the dough, not a Vietnamese take on it. The one address to know when you want that specifically.

French and Italian cooking away from the tourist streets — the place locals send you to for a dinner that is not street food.