My husband and I love eating out at different places. There seems to be a correlation with “hole in the wall” places and excellent food.  After all how does a run-down (dirty) place still in business if their food isn’t good, right? One particular hole in the wall spot is Pho Ga Thanh Thanh in Philadelphia. When we lived in Maryland we would travel up to Philly often and we would go out of our way to stop by Pho Ga Thanh Thanh.

Pho Ga is all they serve. The service is lousy (always reminded me of the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld) and the restaurant is a bit dirty to say the least (right underneath a loud train track). But if you go during lunch hours you could wait 30 minutes to an hours. If you go later in the day they might run out of chicken. The Pho broth is very good but it’s nothing spectacular that we can’t recreate at home. Most of us go there because of their chicken. They use Ga Di Bo (literal translation is “walking chicken”), it is free-range/cage free chicken. The meat of the walking chicken has a little bit of a chew.  At Pho Ga Thanh Thanh the chicken is always perfectly cooked and serve with a “special” dipping sauce which consists of salt, sliced pepper and lime juice (maybe MSG too?). This place got me hooked on eating chicken with this special sauce that I can’t eat chicken Pho any other way now.

Ga Di Bo is quite expensive compare to regular chicken, about 3X the price, so it has not been on our grocery budget.  Last weekend we had a major craving for Pho Ga Thanh Thanh so I decided to splurge a little.

So here is my EASY Pho Instant Pot Recipe using “walking chicken”: Phở Gà Đi Bộ Instant Pot (“Walking Chicken” Pho)

Pictures below was taken years ago when we ate at Pho Ga Thanh Thanh in Philadelphia.