Several weeks ago in the AJC dining column, I saw a review of Pho Ga Tony Tony, a restaurant that opened here in 2019. It is styled similarly to Philadelphia’s famed Pho Ga Thanh Thanh. That shouldn’t be a surprise, as Pho Ga Tony Tony’s co-owner and executive chef Tony Le’s parents run the Philly landmark.

One thing I’ve found strange about this place is the hours – they’re open 10 am to 5 pm (no dinner hours). And for a large part of the pandemic, they were randomly closed on Friday. Since I made my first visit, they’ve opened a second location in Duluth, and I’ve just read that they’re opening a location in Las Vegas.

They’re most known for their pho ga (Vietnamese chicken pho), but the Norcross location has a few other options on the menu. I chose to go with one of those.

I chose the chicken egg noodle soup, which has thick egg noodles, as opposed to the traditional rice noodles, in a chicken broth base. Then all of the typical pho ingredients are added on the side. On a later visit, I had the decondtructed pho, which is just the pho broth to which you can add chicken on the side, as either quarter chicken (white or dark), half chicken or whole chicken. When you get the chicken on the side, it is served with a dipping sauce that has citrus, jalapeno or habanero, and apparently a little bit of crack, based on how you can’t stop eating it. Pho-nom-en-al. This sauce is the key to the food here and I return for it, as often as I can make the trek down to JCB, from the office. Except on Friday…