The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mexican meets Southern cooking
Taqueria del Sol chef shares recipes from ‘Turnip Greens & Tortillas.’
The first time I flipped through the pages of “Turnip Greens & Tortillas: A Mexican Chef Spices Up the Southern Kitchen” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Rux Martin Books, $30), the new cookbook by Eddie Hernandez and Susan Puckett, I had a sudden deja vu-like sensation of visiting with some old friends.
Hernandez is the executive chef of Atlanta-based Taqueria del Sol, a pioneering fast-casual concept that had its roots in Sundown Cafe, a full-service Atlanta restaurant he opened with business partner Mike Klank in 1991.
Between those two places, I’ve been savoring the elegantly deceiving simplicity of chef Eddie’s cooking for over 25 years — dipping warm tortilla chips into ultra-fresh salsas and chunky guacamole, scarfing down confit-like pork carnitas tacos, and slurping up quirky creations like shrimp corn chowder.
During part of that time, Puckett was the food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where she was the first person to give me a chance to write about restaurants and cooking.
A few weeks ago, I met Hernandez and Puckett on the patio of Taqueria del Sol in Decatur to talk about “Turnip Greens & Tortillas.” I reminded them of that history, and told them there was no way I could be objective about the book. But then how could any number of people who have known and loved Eddie’s dishes, and have clamored for his recipes?
“Obviously, I go to a lot of restaurants,” Puckett said. “And I like to go to a lot of different places. But my husband and I were trying to calculate how many times we’ve been here together. We calculated well over 300 or 400 times. One year, I kept all my receipts and I had over 50.”
So what is the secret, seemingly subliminal attraction of the food at Taqueria del Sol? Somehow I think it manages to simultaneously touch on the two main reasons for dining out: novelty and comfort.
There are always specials. Some as left field as the recent Ball Park taco, described on the menu as “A flour tortilla filled with grilled allbeef hot dog, beef red chili, jalapeno coleslaw and mustard.”
And there are always the assurances of off-menu favorites for those in the know. The George, named for one of Taqueria’s longtime employees, is an addictive mashup of three perennial sides: Mexican rice, turnip greens, and charros beans.
But the bottom line is that there are very few restaurants that can deliver quality so quickly at such low prices.
“Mike and I created a concept that worked to minimize costs, and we could do a really big volume at a time when volume wasn’t really appreciated,” Hernandez said. “In 2000, we were doing $1.99 tacos, and people loved them. It’s 18 years later, and our tacos are still only $2.49, and people still love them.”
Even if you’ve never eaten at Taqueria del Sol, “Turnip Greens & Tortillas” will make an impression as a fascinating document of Hernandez’s life and times, captured with Puckett, who helped him tell his story and present his dishes in recipes that home cooks will easily take to.
What you’ll learn in the first-person narrative that serves to introduce Hernandez is that he grew up in Monterrey, Mexico, where he spent time in the kitchen with his grandmother, who owned several restaurants and bars there.
“Being a chef was never in my plans,” he once told me. And for many years, he worked day jobs while touring as a drummer in a popular Latin band.
Ultimately, though, Hernandez decided that wasn’t the best life for him, and a trip to visit a friend in Atlanta set him on a course that eventually changed his mind and forever changed the food scene in the city. Most importantly, as a selfmade chef, Hernandez epitomizes the intersections of Mexican, Southwestern and Southern foodways, constantly inventing while crossing cuisines, much like a musician riffing on an old standard tune.
And he’s never been afraid to try something new or go against the grain of what he calls “food correct.”
“In Mexico we eat what we like and don’t worry about what is authentic to this cuisine or that,” he declares in “Turnip Greens & Tortillas.”
“We take shortcuts. We improvise. We adapt to whatever is around us.”
Recipes excerpted from “Turnip Greens & Tortillas,” © 2018 by Eddie Hernandez & Susan Puckett. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Rux Martin Books. All rights reserved.