Eight years ago, few Nashvillians knew who chef Julio Hernandez was — unless you were a member of the Hillwood Country Club, where he sharpened his French cooking techniques in the kitchen. After a short stint as the executive chef at Nectar in Donelson, Hernandez struck out on his own with the Maíz de la Vida food truck. Integral to the truck’s success was his small commissary kitchen just across the Cumberland from Ted Rhodes Golf Course at 3101 Clarksville Pike in Bordeaux.
From that single slot in a strip mall — otherwise filled with a vape shop, a Cricket Wireless cellphone store and two barbershops — Hernandez and his crew introduced Nashville to the wonders of fresh masa made using heirloom corn imported from Mexico, which the kitchen ground and nixtamalized on site. After years of buying inferior grocery store tortillas, a lot of us finally discovered how important corn is to authentic Mexican food. As Julio says, “Sin maíz, no hay país” — without corn, there is no country.
The food truck is now set up outside Chopper, with a brick-and-mortar planned for the spring
For the first few years of operation, the tortillería was a popular spot for those who knew to drop in and talk corn with Julio — and take home tortillas, masa, mole, beans and small prepared dishes. I have eaten on the hood of my car there more than once because there was no room inside, and I didn’t have enough self-control to wait.
After Hernandez opened his brick-and-mortar Maíz de la Vida restaurant in The Gulch, he pretty much stopped promoting carryout from his Bordeaux store in early 2024. “This was our R&D kitchen,” he explains to me by phone. “We needed it to prep for the restaurant. This is where the birria is simmering and the masa is made.”
Even as The Gulch spot continued to boom, Hernandez missed his roots in Bordeaux. “Originally, this is where we made all our friends. Locals don’t post about it, so the tourists don’t know. We have a love for this side of town, whether it’s cooking for our neighbors at the Waffle House or for the guys who go to the smoke shop first and then get carryout from here. We’ve got a whole party going on here. We’ve got a system!”
He tells me he’d cook for free if he could — of course he can’t. But he has watched his cooking crew learn and progress to the point where he feels comfortable reopening the tortillería to the public. He’s also looking forward to spending some mornings in the shop instead of stressing about reservations. “It’s a love project,” he shares. “We’d be fine without it, but it’s something I’ve been wanting to do.”
Chef Julio Hernandez’s new restaurant is an extension of the Maiz de la Vida concept
The new venture will be named Maíz de la Vida Fonda Fina. A fonda is a small family restaurant in Mexico, and fina indicates fine dining, so this is literally a fine-casual experience with just 12 seats — one community table and a four-top. Hernandez plans to open for business Wednesday, April 29, and then the hours will be 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday for dining in and carrying out. The kitchen will remain open until 9 p.m. for Uber Eats orders and more takeout business.
The chef clearly loves designing menus, because I recall he changed the entire Gulch menu in the first week between the two times I dined there. The Fonda Fina menu has been through a couple of iterations since I first spoke to him about the project. He has (hopefully) settled on a tight menu of burritos, quesadillas, flautas and empanada and a taco bowl. You can definitely expect to see some quesabirria on offer as well as a new item that he is especially excited about.
Memelas are thicker than a traditional tortilla, hand-shaped into an oval and then coated with lard or garlic oil before a quick kiss of the grill. “I’ll be hand-pressing those,” Hernandez promised, “because it’s all about the masa and that’s what makes them so good!” The memelas will come two to an order with one topped with a version of Julio’s transcendent (and Iron Fork-winning) mole negro and the other with a zingy salsa roja. “It’s just masa, fat and sauce!” he tells me — and I can hear his wide grin over the phone.
Fonda Fina will also offer a few grab-and-go items out of a refrigerator near the door. “We’ll have salsa, beans and tortillas by the one-pound and three-pound bag,” Hernandez says. “We’re also partnering with Bare Bones Butcher on a Mexican-style aged chorizo that we’ll sell. We can case chorizo, but we don’t really want to, so we’ll give them the spice, and they’ll make them. We should have those by the beginning of the summer.” Personally, I can’t wait!
Soon after opening, Hernandez hopes to purchase new equipment to up his agua fresca and horchata game both in Bordeaux and The Gulch. “The horchata will be 100 percent corn, no rice!” he swears. “I'm playing with candying and nixtamalizing some pumpkins and squash, and we’ll do stuff with chia, cucumbers and jalapeños, and each drink will have its own special garnish.”
Hernandez has always considered his humble tortilla shop to be the heart of Maíz. But now, like the garnishes on his bebidas, it might just be the cherry on top of his empire!
