Pho Gia Đình Vietnamese Restaurant — Restaurant in Alaska

Bottom line up front: I want to give this place more stars, but can't (yet) because they're not serving what my Vietnamese wife and I recognize as pho bo (beef pho) and that's the only thing we tried. I'll update this rating if we go back to try something else.

Good: Bright, clean, cheery dining room and attentive service. The food was fresh, with a generous portion of meat in the soup. The house-made chili paste was also very good. If we'd had something other than beef pho, we might be looking at 4 or 5 stars.

Not good: Beef pho uses an intensely beefy broth with a spice blend that includes clove, star anise, cinnamon, and cardamom. Our broth lacked any strong flavor and replaced all of those wonderful spices with a very heavy dose of black pepper. The result was a bowl of beef and noodles in broth, but not pho.

It's also common for many pho eaters to ask for the raw steak slices (tai) "on the side," allowing them to control how rare or well done it ends up, like a miniature hot pot. Here, a request for the tai on the side produced beef in its own bowl of broth - already cooked. The server seemed unaware that this defeats the purpose; I assume the kitchen staff didn't know either.

We left feeling that whoever was in charge simply either didn't know how to prepare and serve a bowl of pho (as we've seen it done in Vietnam and all over America) or made some very bad choices on how to make theirs stand out from the crowd.

We enjoyed the restaurant, but not the meal. If we go again, we'll try something else - odds are, we'll...

We got take out here last week and I was pleasantly surprised with my order. I got the chicken bahn mi sandwich. It was pretty good, but not perfect. They do appear to use either homemade mayo or kewpie mayo. The chicken was succulent and was sliced, not shredded. There were plenty of shredded carrots and lots of cucumber. I asked for extra cilantro because I NEVER have too much cilantro, but the sandwich probably contained enough already that I wouldn't have been disappointed. I was a little disappointed that there was no pate, daikon radish or jalapeños on the sandwich, especially since I specifically asked for extra jalapeños. But still, this was the best bahn mi I have found in Anchorage. I have been consistently disappointed in the quality of the bahn mi's here in Anchorage. The quality of the chicken in this sandwich gives me hope for their pork option. The last time I ordered a pork bahn mi, (at a completely different restaurant), I got a disgusting mess of the very cheapest pressed ham and some soggy vegetables on a fairly decent baguette. I will definitely order from here again, and update my review once I have tried some other dishes. We did splurge on fried egg rolls and shrimp and chicken spring rolls. I strongly disliked the egg rolls, but the spring rolls were good. I loved the included peanut sauce. I could eat that...

Probably the Best Vietnamese restaurant in town. I have been to a few and I can say that no one can get even close to GIA ĐÌNH.

Extremely friendly staff, clean environment, fair prices, fresh ingredients, and really good food. I ordered some spring rolls and they were loaded with pork and shrimp. The sauce (I think it's homemade) was also to die for. The appetizer almost filled me up but it was perfect to share with someone. I ordered the Hu Tieu Kho which is rice noodles with pork and shrimp. It came with some really good crunchy wontons. The broth was also delicious.

It was a little bit cold in there but very understandable since it was in the single digit out. The soup was ample to warm me up (specially the homemade chili paste)

I would definitely recommend this place and will be back soon!

Thanks for being treated as GIA...