Andrew H.
Yelp
I was craving a lighter chicken pho, and saw the ads on Facebook for this place. It intrigued me, a lot of pho places will advertise chicken pho, but actually use beef broth, not chicken, and sometimes I just want a lighter broth. So I came here to try it, I saw the price was higher at $16, and chicken isn't more expensive than beef, it's free-range but that still doesn't make it more expensive than beef. Since I'm not sure what other true pho ga options there are, I wanted to try it and see if it was worth it.
First, the broth does pass the test. Whenever I get pho, before I put in basil, lime juice, and bean sprouts, and mix the noodles/meat around, I try a spoonful of the broth. It was tasty, complex, and good. That's where the good part of it stops. They use the wide thicker noodles here, which makes you taste more of the noodles than the broth. They also don't put much chicken at all in the soup. For a $16 bowl, and the fact that chicken is cheaper than beef, you'd expect them to give more, but it's barely any, maybe like 7-8 smaller strips. They also tend to give more noodles than broth, so the ratio is more thick wide noodles, less broth, and even less chicken. At $20 after tax and tip for a pho ga bowl, it's definitely not worth it to me. Kien Giang has a better chicken pho IMO, although I'm not sure whether they use beef or chicken broth. They also do include a few pieces of chicken heart (not liver) and a fertilized egg as someone else mentioned, I ate it but don't feel it added to the pho much.