Kevin Trần
Kevin Trần is the son of the founders of Dong Phuong Restaurant, who grew up in the Vietnamese community in New Orleans. Kevin has a Bachelor in Science of Accounting and works as an accountant, living in San Antonio, but visits on the weekends to work at the Restaurant.
Kevin’s Timeline
1980
Kevin’s parents came to New Orleans from Vietnam after the war.
1982
Kevin's family bought the restaurant from the previous owner. His mother was working at the restaurant and that's how she met Kevin's father.
1998
Kevin started working (unofficially) at the restaurant and would go after school and do homework. He would speak with regulars and get homework help from the police his family hired to watch the business.
2000/2001
Kevin got his first official role at the restaurant and started working at the cash register. This is the position he’s most fond of looking back.
2005
Katrina hit and in the aftermath of the hurricane the restaurant decided to start closing early (at 5pm vs 9pm pre-Katrina). They also decided to minimize the menu (from roughly 8 pages to 1).
2005-2006
Kevin and his younger brother attended high school in California for one year because of Katrina. Kevin and his little brother lived with their aunt and uncle for the rest of the school year while their parents worked on re-opening the restaurant.
2008
After returning to New Orleans in 2006 for his junior year, Kevin graduated high school back in New Orleans at a Jesuit all boys school.
2012
Kevin graduated from Loyola with a degree in pre-med and accounting. He decided after, however, to not pursue a medical career and focused on his accounting work. He’s been working as an accountant ever since.
2022-Present
Kevin and his wife moved to San Antonio for his wife’s residency in Texas, and got married. He still, however, spends most weekends traveling back to NOLA to work at the restaurant on Sundays.
2020
Covid happened. The restaurant started to close even earlier (from 5pm to 3pm) because they found during the pandemic that the extra 2 hours were not significant to their business.
Kevin:
“The restaurant is a huge component of our lives because that is central…that's why we went back to New Orleans, is because of the restaurant. That’s why we were even able to support our families, because of the restaurant.”
Kevin:
“We dated since 2011 and then when we got married last year– she's a doctor, she's doing residency in San Antonio. So basically I moved to San Antonio with her but I still go back to New Orleans on weekends to cook at the restaurant on Sundays. So there are certain dishes that are only available on Sundays and that's because only if I'm there, then it's available.”
Kevin:
“For me, luckily, I was able to experience both; I was able to experience my Vietnamese culture but then also going to Jesuit I was able to see the American culture side of things, so I'm able to flex between both while there are other folks who didn't get a chance to be able to live that, so I’m grateful for that.”
Kevin:
“I think for me that's the benefit of working in the restaurant– it gave me an appreciation for what my parents have gone through. Well, if anything, a sliver of what my parents have gone through because of what they went through back in the 70s and 80s, I will never really know what they went through then. So that's why it's always my baseline of whenever something goes wrong I think back to [the fact that] they were able to get through all that stuff back then, so I'll be able to get through anything.”
Kevin:
In Vietnamese families, at least this first generation, generation 0 and generation 1, we do not express love to each other, other than feeding each other. My uncle's family, they would tell each other that they love each other whenever they leave or go wherever; we never told each other that we love each othGer prior to Katrina. So as a kid, never heard of it, but we kind of took that on, learning from my uncle in California so now we just tell each other when we get off the phone or we leave the house or something– that's probably the biggest thing that we would’ve taken away from Katrina.
Kevin: