The word on our sign is not a dish, and it is not a family name. It is a taxi.

In the Saigon of the 1960s, small three-wheeled taxis carried people through the traffic all day long. Our founder never rode in one. She grew up hearing about them from her mother, and the picture those stories left behind stayed with her long after the taxis themselves disappeared from the streets. When the time came to put a name above a door in Wales, that was the image she reached for.

Her own route here took rather longer. She is a Vietnamese woman who has travelled widely and worked hard for the milestones she has reached, and she will tell you plainly that none of it ever moved her the way food from home does. Wherever she went, friends and business partners were taken out for Vietnamese food. Opening a restaurant was simply the honest end of that habit.

The ambition is modest and very specific. This was never meant to be the most luxurious dining room in Pembrokeshire. It was meant to feel like a family house on a Friday evening, when everyone is finally sitting down, the week gets talked through, the plans for next week get argued over, and nobody notices how late it has become.

That intention has to survive contact with a kitchen, and this is where it shows. The recipes are family ones, carried out of Saigon and cooked for more than ten years in bigger British cities before they arrived on this coast. The broth for our phở is given its full twelve hours before it is allowed near a bowl. The pickles are started the day before service. The dressing is balanced by tasting rather than measuring, because that is how it was taught.

Saundersfoot turned out to suit the food better than we expected. Vietnamese cooking is built on herbs, fresh vegetables, grilled meat and clear broth, so it belongs beside the sea more naturally than people assume. One review described the food as not swimming in grease, which was meant kindly and lands as a good description of the whole cuisine. Welsh sirloin goes into our phở. Local families eat at the next table to visitors who have walked up from the beach with salt still on their skin.

There is a longer history behind that bowl. Phở began as street food, sold from a gánh, a shoulder pole with the entire kitchen hanging from either end, carried through the city and set down wherever there were customers. It travelled from those poles to shopfronts, then out of the country altogether. Brewery Terrace is one more stop on a very long journey.

The kitchen runs every day from midday until ten. The taxi has not made it over yet. Give us time.