CORN IS LIFE

Chef Julio Hernandez has created his own version of authenticity at his Nashville restaurant

- ELLEN FORT

Anything grown in soil tells the story of that place, whether it's grapes grown in the hot sun and cool fog of California, tomatoes grown in the rich soil of Tennessee, or a peach plucked from a tree in South Carolina. Similarly, chefs pick up the flavors and influences of the places where they grow. For Julio Hernandez, chef-owner of Maíz de la Vida, his story is peppered with influences from the Bronx, New York, to Tlaxcala, Mexico, and back, and now from his current home in Nashville. Each place left its mark on a young chef who was eager to learn-but it was in Nashville where Hernandez finally learned to cook Mexican food, and where he began to tell the story of his life through corn.

The loud hum of the molino, a stone-fitted grinding mill, mingles with laughter and the sound of Dangerdoom playing over the restaurant sound system one early morning at Maíz de la Vida, the restaurant that's opened a portal to Mexico in Nashville. It's a masa-making day in the kitchen, which means executive sous chef Obed Vallejo is in the kitchen before the sun is up, milling corn into the dough that will become part of almost every dish in the restaurant, from tortillas to tamales. This process, called nixtamalization, is a time-consuming method in which kernels are cooked and soaked in an alkaline solution of water and "cal" (short for calcium hydroxide) until they are soft and malleable. It's then ground into masa, the dough that forms the basis of Mexican cuisine. Corn, and therefore masa, is the lifeblood of Maíz de la Vida, whose name directly translates to corn of life.

And in Mexico, corn is life, a sentiment that is deeply entrenched in Mexican identity. It's believed to have originated in Central America about 9,000 years ago, cultivated by Indigenous peoples who eventually spread it into North and South America. According to the Mayan creation story, gods created humans out of a dough of yellow and white corn.