By: John Kessler of Atlanta Journal & Constitution

WHEN THE ATLANTA DINING public first met Alex Kinjo, he was sitting on a bar stool at MF Sushi Bar in front of his omnipresent Mac PowerBook. He cut a distinctive figure in a black suit that Neo from "The Matrix" would covet, shoulder-length hair dyed the color of copper and oversize tinted glasses that only true hipsters and Miami Beach matrons can get away with.

We soon learned that Kinjo was both the restaurant's frontman and the designer responsible for its chill vibe. But after noting his presence, we didn't pay him a whole lot of attention. We were all much more interested in the handiwork of his brother, MF ("Magic Fingers") Chris, behind the sushi counter.

Now, Alex Kinjo and his laptop have decamped to Nam, an exciting gamble that is certain to test his mettle as a restaurateur. With Nam, he has concocted Atlanta's first upscale Vietnamese restaurant -- a potent and personal vision that starts with a heavy dose of his unique design sensibility, then adds a thoughtful wine list, lovely waitresses in flowing white gowns and a broad menu supervised by the Kinjos' mother, Anh Hoang.

Hoang and her kitchen face a two-fold challenge -- first, to expose patrons to culinary riches of Vietnam that they won't find in local noodle shops and then to do so in a manner appropriate to white-tablecloth dining. They can meet this challenge quite brilliantly with food that is as thrilling as it is graceful, as urgent with flavor as it is subtle with nuance. But they are still working the dishes through one by one, and some preparations emphatically don't work in the setting. Never mind those; keep exploring the menu: Nam is such an exciting work in progress that you want to be there from the start.

If you ever visited Zoê's, the previous tenant in this Midtown Promenade space, you won't recognize the room. It used to feel hard, angular and wide open. Now it is a cocoon, buffeted from the outside world by sheer drapes and illuminated by rosy Chris Moulder light sculptures and luminaria on the floor. On one wall, Kinjo has hung banners of his artwork of women with flowing hair. Actual women with flowing hair and gowns glide through the dining room as if on invisible wheels, waiting on tables.

Every chair, every dish, every chopstick cuts a unique form. Other restaurants put a carnation in the table's bud vase. At Nam, it's a red anthurium on a listing foot-long stem. I have to admit that after staring down its nasty yellow spadix for half the meal, I finally had to request its removal.

It was a happy moment when the flower was replaced by a platter of rice flour tamales (banh nam). You unwrap these steamy bundles, then anoint them with a splash of the best nuoc cham sauce you will ever find in Atlanta. The tender rice cake is studded with bits of pork crackling, shrimp and wood-ear mushroom. The sauce is alive with lime, chile and garlic. And it all dances across your tongue -- little pops and bursts and syncopated steps of flavor.

The steamed rice cakes (banh beo) are the same as you find on the counter at Vietnamese carryout shops -- soft silver-dollar white cakes with ground shrimp and scallions scattered atop. Another splash of nuoc cham, and then you realize it's better than any in town, with a freshness, a velvetiness, a clean snap of flavor you hadn't anticipated.

Other dishes are exactly what you anticipate. The fried imperial rolls (cha gio) are what you expect from every decent Vietnamese joint: a juicy pork and glass noodle filling in a sheer wheat-flour wrapper. But I am personally waiting for one, just one, local restaurant to prepare cha gio with rice-paper wrappers and serve them with a full platter of salad garnishes in which to wrap them. That's what good Vietnamese places in the West do. (According to Kinjo, he has had a hard time finding the right kind of wrappers here but is beta-testing a recipe that may appear on the specials list.)

The ground shrimp on sugar cane (chao tom) are also fine, also typical. You get a platter of what looks like pink ice pops -- sections of sugar cane with shrimp paste steamed on the outside. You pull the paste from the reedy cane and wrap it with lettuce and rice noodles, dunk it in nuoc cham and enjoy the fresh, simple flavor.

To find the extraordinary dishes at Nam, you need only ask. It's a short and oft-recommended list. The "shaking" filet mignon (a signature at San Francisco's top-rated Slanted Door) brings cubes of marinated filet mignon that have been stir-fried for about three nanoseconds with garlic and onion. You prepare a table sauce (more of a slurry) of salt, black pepper and lime juice and then dip a corner of each beef cube into it. You think you know melt in the mouth? Ha. Just try this: whole new vistas of melt in the mouth await.

You'll also be directed to the striped bass, which gets quite the show-stopping production number. What first arrives at the table is something that looks like a giant green jellyroll. It is a banana-leaf package that opens to reveal a long, green opo squash that itself opens to reveal two fish fillets sandwiched together that you separate to reveal a filling of pork, mushroom and lily bud.

But wait, you're not done! Out comes the nuoc cham, drizzled over the top to release a fragrance that grows more swoon worthy with each inhalation. You eat cross sections of this complex dish. You take another sip of the good French viognier you ordered, and all conversation abruptly stops.

When you explore the menu without guidance, it all turns very hit and miss. Grilled Japanese eggplants are cooked whole until the skin is blistered, then sliced open and anointed with garlic sauce. It is like eating a fabulous vegetable custard. But then stir-fried Asian long beans are dank-flavored and fibrous. (I think this vegetable needs to be cooked longer or dry-fried in the Chinese fashion to bring out its sweetness.)

A fish head soup with tofu, which we ordered on a dare, had such a resonant broth and astonishingly clean flavor that we all found ourselves cleaning every bit of meat from every crevice of fish head. However, there was only one taker for the eyeball.

But then a stylish bowl of sautéed baby clams with serpentine sesame crisps had a muddy flavor and mealy texture that made us long for clam dip.

The kitchen also has the occasional execution snafu. The shaking beef at one meal features the unmistakable flavor of a gas flare up (that pan was tipped a little too vigorously into the flame); the rice can be overcooked; the coarsely ground lemon grass beef contains a few pieces of cartilage.

And then there's the issue of dessert. It isn't customary in Vietnam to have sweets after dinner, but the kitchen obliges customers with a set of warm dumplings in a ginger syrup. I'm not sure if they're a kitchen experiment or a kind of tea pastry doing double duty. But they're so leaden, you can't even cut into them. You know if Virginia Woolf were served these dumplings, she'd stuff them into her pockets and walk into the Chattahoochee.

But I'll put up with any flawed items this kitchen wants to dish out because I know the rewards are right around the corner. I've had glorious meals at Nam and merely interesting ones. But I can't wait to rush back after each one.

By the way, the name of this restaurant may evoke the GI nickname to American ears, but it actually means "south." (Vietnam is the land of the southern Viet people.) For Kinjo, a man of mixed ethnicity, it is a tribute to both his Vietnamese mother and his father, who comes from the island of Okinawa at the southern tip of the Japanese archipelago.

This young man, one of the great talents on Atlanta's dining scene, has done his parents proud.