ROUSES_Winter2022_Magazine Pages Web

It’s said that everyone has their own “love language” — or way to express affection for those they care about — that can manifest as everything from sending encouraging texts to a friend, to changing the oil in a loved one’s car, to splurging on a one-in-a-lifetime couple’s cruise. For Thi Tan “Jeannie” Finch, known to her nine grandchildren as Maw Maw, cooking the food of her native Vietnam is a love language that’s spanned decades, particularly around the holidays and through the Lunar

living in Louisiana. She raised her children, including Peyton’s dad, Tony, with the mindset of “counting on your family and doing your part,” says Finch. That included at her restau rant, Thi Tan’s Asian Cuisine in Slidell, which Jeannie (hilariously) decided to purchase on her own and told her husband about after the fact. “When I came over here [to America] I had a dream, and I said, ‘My dream will come true.’ I said, ‘I’m going to have a small house, have a whole bunch of kids, and when all my kids grow up, and I would like to open a restaurant. I opened the restaurant, and owned it almost seven years,” Jeannie remembers. “All of them worked in the restaurant, too. The funny thing is on Friday night when the customers would come in and it would be crowded, all I would have to do is pick up the phone and they would all come help me. It was more like a family restaurant.” And while the restaurant primarily served Chinese food for the public, at home, Jeannie’s passion for Vietnamese food shines through. The laundry list of delicious dishes that are often found bubbling in Jeannie’s kitchen are enough to make anyone wish for a dinner invitation: barbecue fish, chicken with snow peas, carrots and bok choy; Vietnamese-style chicken wings; lemongrass chicken; bun bo, the spicy pork-and-beef soup; bun thit nuong,

LUNAR NEW

YEAR: WISHING YOU HAPPINESS AND PROSPERITY By Sarah Baird

New Year. “I

t’s always like a banquet when I come over here!” Peyton Finch, her granddaughter and current marketing intern for Rouses, laughs

as she sits side-by-side with her grandmother. “She’s just a very generous person. She wants to share her love through cooking.” Originally from Binh Dinh, Nghia Binh, Vietnam, Finch met her husband when he was stationed in Vietnam with the Coast Guard and eventually settled in Slidell with their five children, joining the more than 30,000 people of Vietnamese ancestry currently

ROUSES WINT ER 2022 74