Good Morning, Vietnam! 

Four of us milled around hungry in front of the Four Star on a Tuesday night. Dave's friend Joey, a young CCA grad caterer (he majored in pastry, probably wrote his thesis on chocolate) had an idea. "How about -- I'm not sure how to pronounce it -- Levi? Levee?" "Huh?" I said. "It's a Vietnamese place over on Geary that I sort of like." "Vietnamese -- oh, French, La Vie," I said, stretching the "vee" sound to limo length. "For a moment there I thought you were talking about bluejeans." "What's the word mean?" Joey asked. "La Vie -- that's 'life.' " We high-tailed it toward Geary, TJ quietly singing "That's Life," but not like Ol' Blue Eyes.

"What's the food like there?" I asked. "It's not expensive, but it's kind of ambitious," Joey said. "Something like Slanted Door?" I asked. "Maybe not that creative -- but it's not that crowded either," Joey replied. "You can just go and eat there on a weeknight," Dave added. "No waiting. It's good, but it's not a major event."

Slanted Door's success was a reminder of a cuisine I'd neglected for years. When members of Vietnam's more comfortable classes started arriving here and opening local restaurants in the early '70s, I didn't really warm up to the food, not the way that I later ignited for the spicier, baroque flavors of Thailand and Cambodia. In hindsight (reconfirmed by an unsatisfying recent visit to one of the "deluxe" first-wave survivors) the kitchens seemed to tone down their cooking to suit Vietnamese concepts of Western palates -- apparently based on the tender taste buds of the French, who occupied Vietnam until Uncle Ho routed them in 1954. They served a sort of Colonial Fusion cuisine, mingling Gallic and "Indochinese" dishes and flavors. Cooking magazines of the time may have described Vietnamese food as "spicy," but you rarely encountered a pepper.

With the mass immigration a few years later, the Bay Area Vietnamese community reached critical mass, sufficient to support restaurants serving a less compromised version of the homeland cuisine; meanwhile the Thai craze familiarized the rest of us with Southeast Asian flavors. Now, if a newer Vietnamese restaurant deigns to serve "orange duck," it comes out closer to the Chinese version than the old French canard. La Vie is one of the new crop, open just 19 months. As we entered, our appetites were piqued by the aroma of charcoal-grilled meat. The simple decor is ornamented only by a couple of Asian stringed instruments on the walls and a Buddhist shrine over the kitchen door. Although most tables were occupied, an acoustic ceiling (yay!) kept the noise down. We ate our Southeast Asian dinner to the gentle canned-music strains of "The Condor Passes" and "Theme From The Godfather."

We confronted a long menu and a short, smart wine list, with a dozen-odd food-friendly selections available by the glass. TJ tried a rich, almost fruity beer named "33." The waiter explained that the French in Vietnam had brewed it under the name BaMba. When they left, the Vietnamese said, "Go, but leave your brewery." In Vietnamese, BaMba is pronounced "Pa-Pa," meaning "three-three." Hence, the new name. Other beverages include exotic shakes (guanabana or yellow bean) and strange sodas (lemon, fizzy eggnog, or plum -- Chinese salted plum).

A mixed appetizer plate ($9.95) had two skewers of tasty barbecued pork marinated in lemongrass, one skewer of four succulent shrimps, and three bland, meat-packed Imperial Rolls (Cha Gio). There was a heap of moist rice-paper circles to wrap the appetizers in, and a pile of sup-porting characters: lacy cakes of rice vermicelli, lettuce leaves, sprigs of mint and Asian basil, pickled baby leek-bulbs, shredded carrots. A ramekin held nguoc mam cham, a sweet-and-sour, slightly spicy dipping sauce based on nguoc mam, Vietnam's omnipresent fish sauce (similar to Thai fish sauce, but somewhat stronger). The waiter showed us how to wrap our appetizers in the rice papers with the assorted condiments.

We'd regretfully declined the whole crab ($24-29) in favor of four more affordable entrees, which arrived almost simultaneously. The star was juicy barbecued minced beef rolled up in "Aromatic Lot Leaf" (Bo La Lot, $6.95), a dish arising from a gourmet emperor's reign at the old imperial court at Hue. La lot turns out to be wild betel leaf. Nearly black, it has the tender texture of a fresh grape leaf and a slight tang.

The other entrees that night were less pleasing. A special rice clay pot ($5.75) included prawns, chicken, a bare modicum of Chinese sausage, and fresh shiitake mushrooms. It had a good flavor, and the sausage was fresh lap chong like Joey's mother uses, rather than packaged. However, there wasn't enough liquid to moisten all the rice, so appropriately or not we sprinkled on some dipping sauce (which also conferred a little more kick). Eggplant in coconut and curry sauce ($5.75) was bland and very mushy, the coconut and curry undetectable. Chicken sauteed with lemongrass, green beans, and sesame seed (Ga Xao Xa Ot, $6.75) was described on the menu as "spicy," but the waiter had forgotten to ask us how spicy we wanted it. We received precisely one small hot pepper, period. The green beans were snappy and moist, the thin-sliced chicken was dry.

We finished off with perfect fried bananas ($2.50), melting inside a light, crisp batter, and with "fried ice cream" ($2.50), consisting of Polly Ann brand coconut ice cream flash-fried in a thin, crumb-textured batter. As we left, Joey pointed to the front window, where a review from one of the dailies was posted. "See that? Three stars," he said. "I'd give it two." We agreed, provisionally -- until TJ and I returned on a Sunday night, both of us ravenous after half-fasting through a miniflu. Over a third of the tables in the near-full room were occupied by small groups of Vietnamese, many entertaining American friends of various other ethnicities.

A serving of eight minced shrimp puffs grilled on sugar cane ($8.95), another Hue palace delicacy, proved to be one of the best versions we've tried, served with same array of accompaniments as the first night's appetizers, and with a full-flavored dip of hoisin sauce, "five spices," and minced peanuts. Usually, the sugar cane is all dried out, but several pieces here were fresh and juicy -- so their shrimp lumps were sweeter, too. Crab and asparagus soup ($3.95) had mushy, canned asparagus and (probably) canned crab (and not a lot of either), but the sublimely delicate broth had just a waft of eggflower and a bare touch of thickener. The ultrathin sliced meat in the raw beef salad ($6.95) was near-flavorless, but we enjoyed the zesty sweet-sour marinade with its minced peanuts, diced cucumber, and fresh herbs. Alongside were rice-puff shells, crisp and neutral-tasting, which dissolved if you filled them with salad. The same beef slices, marinated, skewered, and grilled (Bo Nuang Xa, $6.95), were necessarily well-done but pleasantly smoky. Catfish fillet in clay pot (Ca Kho To, $7.95) met our specification of "pretty spicy," with a half-dozen small dried peppers sauteed crisp. These lent a touch of smokiness as well as piquancy to a complex sweet-savory sauce with a shade of caramel, bathing a few tender chunks of earthy catfish. It was a treat, but better yet was another spicy dish, the "seafood combo" (Muc Va Tom Xao Xa Ot, $7.95) of sauteed prawns and squid. The calamari were flattened and crosshatched, and both types of tender seafood bore a trace of the grill. The saute (into which they must have been dropped at the last minute) included high-quality fresh bamboo shoots, crisp-sweet onions cooked just past raw, string beans, and dried chiles. The tummy-warming saute sauce was made of fish sauce, sesame oil, a touch of sugar, and a lot of fine-minced lemongrass.

Meanwhile, our nearest neighbors were having a flaming orgy. Next to their dining table was a standing tray, bearing a soup bowl in which alcohol burned brightly, cooking a smaller bowlful of ingredients set inside it -- dish No. 35, "Flaming Beef & Prawn." The beneficiaries, two Chinese-American women, were not exactly happy. We overheard them tell each other, and then tell the waiter, they'd expected grilled beef (No. 33) and grilled prawns (No. 42) -- which are also cooked at your table, but on little electric grills. But then the aromas started emanating as the tomato and onion and seafoods reached doneness. The waiter was willing to replace the dish, but the pair decided to try it anyway. A few minutes later, we heard them say, "Oh, it really turned out nice! It's a good thing we didn't send it back."

They were happy now. We were happy. Averaging the two meals, we'd say, 2 1/2 stars. Pretty good, not perfect -- but that's life.