To understand why the area’s newest Vietnamese restaurant is serving wild Spanish octopus and short rib pappardelle, it helps to know about the woman who opened it in Falls Church this spring.

Tuyêt Nhi Lê was 6 when she left Saigon for Northern Virginia in 1994 with 30 relatives, thanks to her grandfather, who had worked for the Americans during the Vietnam War and had been promised a new life in the United States in return. As a youth, she lived in two worlds. At home, her mother made stir-fries and soups; with schoolmates, Lê ate pasta and pizza. Wherever she found herself, she says, “I wasn’t Vietnamese enough to be Vietnamese, and I wasn’t American enough to be American.”

Nue Elegantly Vietnamese, part of the Founders Row development, was an attempt to bridge her feelings, says Lê, the co-founder of the local restaurant group Happy Endings Hospitality. “I wanted to create someplace where people like me can find a connection.”

The alluring restaurant, one of three under the same roof owned by Lê’s company, is also inspired by her late great-great-uncle, Lê Phổ, an artist of note in Vietnam whose painting of a nude — nue in French — sold for almost $1.4 million at Christie’s in Hong Kong four years ago.

Lê hoped to channel her ancestor’s eye, modern France and the glamour of 1960s Indochine at Nue. One of two spaces, the Jade Room, is small and seductive. Jade, says the restaurateur, is “the gold of Southeast Asia” and evocative of the jungle. The Flower Room, in contrast, suggests an impressionist garden. One wall is devoted to flowers, some in the form of a mural, others as a garland strung across the top of the painting. “I wanted people to feel as if they were sitting in one of Lê Phổ’s paintings,” says the restaurateur. Panels the shade of lemongrass (sound sponges!) float above pink or plum chairs. Both rooms offer their charms, although dates might be offered the Jade Room, groups the Flower Room.

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Nue’s chef, Daniel Lê, shares his employer’s last name, although they are unrelated, and a similar background. He grew up in Harrisburg, Pa., the son of refugees from Vietnam who continued to cook the food they were familiar with in their adopted country. The aroma of fish sauce, he says, infused his clothes and followed him to school. Lê last cooked in Washington at Bresca, as chef de partie in charge of the pasta station. To arrive at Nue’s current menu, he collaborated with Tuyêt Nhi Lê’s mother, Tuyêt Koa Vuong, an accomplished home cook.

They hook me at first bite: a trio of plump local oysters, warm from the grill and nestled in their shells with buttermilk seasoned with fish sauce, garlic, lemon zest and black pepper. Sprinkled with crushed toasted peanuts and finished with honey-scallion oil, it goes down with each slurp like oyster stew with verve. Chile oil wontons, fluttery as ghosts in their bowl, sport juicy fillings of shrimp and pork; octopus gets a massage of shrimp paste before a rope of it is charred on the grill and staged atop a Fresno chile emulsion. Nue’s appetizers focus on ingredients from the deep blue sea, with the exception of a rich chicken liver mousse. Billed as phở pâté, the first course is seasoned like the Vietnamese noodle soup with five-spice powder and cilantro and scooped up with crullers.

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The most immediately identifiable Vietnamese small plate is chả giò, nubby egg rolls filled with a mouthwatering combination of crab, shrimp and pork, plus starchy taro and sweet carrots. We bundle the hot daggers in cool lettuce leaves and plunge them into fish sauce tamed by sugar and electric with lime juice. As we devour the snack, Falls Church retreats and Saigon takes hold, or so our mouths lead us to believe.

Short rib pappardelle sounds Italian. The chef says he made it with bò kho in mind, Vietnamese beef stew eaten on its home turf with bread or rice noodles but at Nue with pasta. The twist would be better with less coconut soda in the ragu and more cooking time for the noodles. More to my taste is the coconut curry risotto, golden-orange and packed with enough heat to cause blushing. “Dante before the inferno,” joked a friend after tasting the creamy bowl of Hokkaido sushi rice, garnished with purple sweet potato. The risotto is vegetarian without the optional sweet scallops, also from Hokkaido. Whole flounder is fried to a crisp, deboned and delivered to the table with a flotilla of fresh herbs, woven rice noodles and lettuce to accompany the snowy fish. A picnic for Pisces.

Nue treats dessert like earlier courses — differently. Lincoln logs of cake, made with yuca and coconut, arrive on a plate that’s dusted with powdered sugar and filled out with a royal purple scoop of ube ice cream sprinkled with coconut. The fingers of cake are crisp to the touch and chewy like mochi in the center.

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It’s not just the design or the contemporary cooking that sets this newcomer apart from the area’s Vietnamese pack. The drinks list at Nue borrows a page from the Seven Reasons Group in Washington, which entices customers with fun little sketches of liquid pleasures. Before ordering here, for instance, you know Almost Famous — rye, warm-spiced hibiscus liqueur, guava for sweetness — is served in a snifter and capped with a froth of egg white and Thai basil.

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Some people have questioned the name of the owner’s restaurant group. Tuyêt Nhi Lê counters that when she and her partners started out, they had no experience in the industry and used the hospitality principles taught by the esteemed New York restaurateur Danny Meyer in his best-selling book, “Setting the Table.” They saw Meyer’s guidelines as paths to happy endings in their eateries, which now encompass six brands and eight locations. (Nue shares a kitchen with siblings Chasin’ Tails, a seafood restaurant, and Roll Play, a fast-casual source for Vietnamese street food.)

Earlier in her career, when she says she felt “not enough,” Lê figured something modern like Nue would come later in life. Diners are lucky she didn’t wait, because her latest might be her best — plenty, I venture.

Nue Elegantly Vietnamese

944 W. Broad St., Falls Church. 571-777-9599. nuevietnamese.com. Open for indoor and outdoor dining, delivery and takeout 5 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Prices: small plates $14 to $22, main courses $24 to $52. Sound check: 70 decibels/Conversation is easy. Accessibility: No barriers at entrance; ADA-compliant restrooms.

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