Pho Ga Nha - San Jose

fried egg roll with greens and sauce

This restaurant is located on a strip mall across from Grand Century Mall on Story Rd. Parking there is a bit tricky since the lot is small and that strip mall got other restaurants as well. We got there after lunch time almost 2 pm but surprisingly there was still a few people lining up for this restaurant. But we got a table within five minutes.

This restaurant was pretty new and just like Pho Hanoi they like to line up their tables with white paper. I seriously don't know why especially this restaurant because their tables already got glass top. Beside it's such a waste.

Anyway, I was curious with their chicken pho so that's what I ordered. But I found out that they serve fried chicken with dry yellow noodle too. I only know another restaurant that does the same thing. So hubby ordered that one.



They brought us three different sauce on little sauce plate. One had half sriracha and plum sauce and  one looked homemade - finely minced garlic and ginger sauce. Wow. One taste of the sauce and we were impressed - garlicky, sweet, salty and gingery but not over powering. Then there was a small bowl with mixture of soy sauce and grind up chili.

The chicken pho was okay in my opinion. My first slurp tasted very peppery though later on I realized that's because I didn't mix it well. But the rest of the broth was not impressive and was a bit bland. The chicken meat was pretty good, not too dry and dipping it into the garlicky sauce did improve the taste. But that's about it. I still like the Pho Hanoi chicken pho better. The broth at Pho Hanoi tasted very homely like something made with just chicken, nothing else.

3 different types of sauce each with different characteristic

chicken pho with bean sprouts

fried chicken with dry yellow noodle

Hubby's fried chicken with dry yellow noodle was great. The chicken used was game hen so it was almost personal size and the meat was not too dry when deep fried. The outer portion of the chicken was crispy and so was the drummette and the wing. The noodle was seasoned lightly and was quite a huge portion. I think it's worth the $13 price.

I saw the chicken rice and also chicken salad on the menu and were ordered by quite a few tables around us. We will go back and try those next time.

rating :

Pho Ga Nha
930 Story Rd, San Jose, CA 95122
Phone: (408) 298-168