To start with the name, the citronella aroma of lemongrass is not widely invoked, but pho — the beef-noodle soup of Hanoi — is a good choice here, and the name is grafted onto spicy and seafood-based soups that aren’t usually called pho. The stock is lighter than the standard one from Pho Pasteur, and less beefy. In fact, it really shines in the rich “pho chicken” ($4.95, $5.95). This has less cinnamon than chicken pho elsewhere, and more of the traditional anise-lemongrass-ginger aroma of the beef pho. Like my grandmother’s chicken soup, it has just a stippling of fat on the surface for extra flavor. The meat is shredded chicken breast, there is a big cake of noodles (the small bowl is about three French-restaurant soup portions), and it has all the trimmings: bean sprouts, Asian basil, cress, a lime, a single incendiary small green chili, a caddy of hot sauces and hoisin, and a sprinkle of scallion and cilantro.

Pho dac biet ($6.50, $7.25) is the original beef soup, but the light stock, fat-free here, doesn’t push it quite so far. The usual meats are all there, but the tendon, tripe, and fatty flank are kept to a token slice or two, while the rare round steak is emphasized. Pho satay ($4.95) is not traditional; it’s hot and spicy and enriched with fresh tomatoes, onions, and the rare round steak.

The first Vietnamese food I ever tasted was shrimp on sugar cane ($8.95), in which the shrimp is ground to paste and broiled on skewers of sugar-cane pith. One chewed up the whole thing, getting the sweetness with the fresh shrimp paste, but then having to deal with a lot of fiber from the cane. At Pho Lemongrass the shrimp paste was not fully wrapped around the cane, so it couldn’t be picked up as a unit. This suggested a typically Vietnamese way of eating a lot of little savories, wrapped up in a lettuce leaf with herbs and dipped into a sweet-sour fish-sauce dip.

Lettuce leaves are provided with a number of appetizers, including the impressive banh xeo crêpe ($8.25), really an omelet the size of a calzone wrapped around some shrimp and pork and bean sprouts. This is a little crunchy by itself, but perfect in a lettuce wrap. Saigon ravioli ($4.75) are savory like Peking ravioli, but shaped like the round Italian version, albeit fried.

Roti quail ($9.25) is worth the premium if you don’t mind some small bones, since there are two tiny birds here, each split in half, and each rather tasty in a dark-meat way, with a sweet-sour glaze. Despite the menu reference to rotisserie quail, these looked and tasted artfully fried. Vietnamese spring rolls ($4.50) are unequivocally fried, and because they are partly stuffed with noodles, they’re both crispy and bouncy between the teeth. The skins are thick, as in egg rolls, but the cigar-like caliber assures plenty of crunch per bite. Fresh summer rolls ($4.25) have more of the same filling, wrapped in softened translucent rice paper and served with a hoisin-like bean dip.

One of the few Vietnamese dishes that didn’t impress was the goi salad ($6.95), which ought to be shredded Asian vegetables with the sweet-sour fish-sauce dressing. Ours was watery, as though the vegetables had been dressed wet. The chicken (or you could choose shrimp or tofu) was bland shredded breast, which ought to have been marinated. The Western vegetables like celery, red bell pepper, and carrot, which are worked effectively into the stir-fries, seemed to stick out in the salad.

The best of our main dishes was lemongrass tofu ($8.25), a lively and spicy stir-fry where some chopped peanuts and good technique gave the firm tofu real flavor and texture, and the accompanying vegetables had a distinctive flavor. At the same dinner we had our worst dish: tangerine prawn ($16.95), a Chinese-style special with four giant prawns that had developed an uncomfortably fishy flavor. The sauce was very sweet and a little sour, making even the broccoli and zucchini and pea pods in the center of the dish hard to eat. The “jasmine rice” was decently made, but didn’t have the full aroma of Thai jasmine rice.

A more modest grilled-shrimp vermicelli plate ($6.50) was entirely successful. The portion was five medium shrimp; they had some grilled flavor and were kept in a lettuce wrap-up with rice noodles and salad herbs. Zone dieters will go for this one. Steak luc lac ($12.95) was another sweet-sour-sauce dish, but it was saved by superbly tender cubes of rib steak (or prime rib, in another cuisine). Saigon fried rice ($6.50), despite the name, was white fried rice of a Chinese style, featuring egg, shrimp, chicken, carrot confetti, and rounds of Chinese sausage. I love Chinese sausage, but this was greasy fried rice.

Pho Lemongrass has a wine list, a full bar, and a very interesting list of bottled beers, with a good price on Samuel Adams ($3.25). Vietnamese-brewed “33” beer ($3.50) is a light pilsner, served numbingly cold as in the Caribbean. I guess this is progress, but though the bar is impressive, I’m still waiting for Cuban rum. A soft drink I sometimes like is “salty limeade” ($2.50), which is actually a pickled lime squeezed into a glass of soda water. It’s weird but refreshing.

There are no desserts in the American sense, but you can do what the Vietnamese do and have a smoothie for dessert. Pho Lemongrass offers strawberry, banana, pineapple, and guava, plus a “house” smoothie that seems to combine all four, in about that order.

Pho Lemongrass is a pretty room, whose yellow walls and bright prints make it seem airy even in winter. Twenty-five years after we lost the war in Vietnam, I’m still proud to have opposed it, although the communist government lied to its supporters and hit the Chinese community of Saigon especially hard. But I am glad we have Vietnamese-American restaurants now.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at robtnadeau@aol.com.