The main attraction at Madame Vo BBQ, now two months into its run on Second Avenue in the East Village, is a seven-course dinner on the theme of beef. This is a familiar concept in Vietnam, where it is known as bo bay mon, as well as in San Jose, Calif., Houston and other areas with robust Vietnamese populations. In New York, where the Vietnamese restaurant scene is more anemic, bo bay mon is still a rarity. The rough outlines of the setup at Madame Vo, though, will be familiar to any New Yorker who has gone out for Korean barbecue.

New York City bureaucracy is unwelcoming to the tabletop charcoal grills seen in Hanoi, so an electric grill under a metal screen is embedded in each table. Once the grill is switched on and the metal rods down at kneecap level begin to warm up, an array of sauces, condiments and vegetables will arrive. When the rods are red, a server with a pair of tongs will lay some meat down on the screen, return periodically to fiddle with it and eventually decide when it is ready to be eaten.

The similarities with, say, Han Joo Chik Naeng Myun & BBQ in Queens end, of course, with the actual food. Yes, both offer lettuce for wrapping, but at Madame Vo BBQ it is part of a Vietnamese table salad, along with fresh herbs; raw cucumbers, pineapple and apple; and pickled carrots and daikon. The restaurant also sets out a nifty caddy that holds circles of rice paper and warm water, in a miniature bathtub, for wetting the paper until it is soft enough to fashion into rolls.