The bowl that leaves our kitchen more often than any other arrives unfinished, and that is deliberate.

Cold vermicelli sits at the bottom. Grilled pork goes on top while it is still warm from the heat. A spring roll is cut across so you can see what is inside. Then come the herbs, the cucumber, the pickled carrot and the crushed peanuts, and a small bowl of nước chấm is set down beside it rather than poured over. Nothing has been mixed. Every element is still doing its own thing.

In Vietnam this is food for the late afternoon. It is eaten near a grill on the pavement, at the hour when the heat starts to let go and what everybody wants is something cold with something hot on top of it. The smoke reaches the street before the plate does, which is most of the reason anyone stops.

That timing is why the dish settles so easily into a Pembrokeshire August. You walk up from the beach with salt on your skin, genuinely hungry, and yet the sun has taken the edge off your appetite. Phở is a wonderful thing in February. In August, this is the bowl.

Here is how to finish it. The nước chấm goes right across the top, over everything, not into one corner. Then you turn the bowl over with your chopsticks, lifting from the bottom, until the noodles carry a little pork, a little dressing and a piece of herb in almost every mouthful. It should land sweet, sour, salty and fresh at the same time, and the moment you get that balance is the moment the dish makes sense. Say the word and we will do that first turn at the table for you. Nobody minds. It is how it is done at home.

It has quietly become our best seller, which we did not plan and now understand. It is cold enough for a warm day, substantial enough after a swim, and it explains the rest of the menu in a single bowl. When somebody tells us they have never eaten Vietnamese food before, this is usually what we put in front of them.

Old Saigon is a long way from this coast. The recipes made the journey. The kitchen runs every day from midday to ten, and the bowl is ready whenever you are.