Former Reality TV Contestant Opening Restaurant in Chamblee

Chef Alexis Hernandez is opening Union Hill Kitchen, an organic chef-driven restaurant in Chamblee.

Hernandez named the restaurant on Peachtree Road for Union Hill High School, where he first realized his passion for cooking as a student in Union City, New Jersey.

 “It’s kind of an homage to where I first was awakened,” Hernandez said, noting that it would be many years after graduating before he would realize his dream.

After high school, Hernandez left New Jersey to study at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago where he was preparing for a career not in the culinary field but in theology.

“I grew up in a very religious Southern Baptist home and my father is a minister,” Hernandez said. “I always wanted to help people and inspire them.”

After graduating, Hernandez spent some time working in area churches before moving with his husband Marty to their 65-acre family farm in southern Indiana. While at the farm, Hernandez met with area farmers, picking up farming techniques and recipes from the men and women who lived nearby.

“I truly believe that’s where the best recipes come from,” Hernandez said. “All of those men and women that I was cooking with have recipes that once they’re gone, they’re gone and that’s why I think the legacy of recipes is important.”

Not long after moving to the farm, it was his husband who gave him the final push to fulfill his culinary dreams when he surprised Hernandez with an acceptance letter to Sullivan University, one of the top five culinary schools in the nation.

“One Christmas, Marty gave me this box and I opened it up and there was a chef’s coat in there… and then I look at the bottom and he had applied for me to go to Sullivan,” Hernandez said.

Sullivan took Hernandez from home cook to professional cook and helped him earn a spot on season six of The Next Food Network Star in 2009. He was eliminated after week one but his culinary career was far from over.

When he moved to Atlanta a few years later, he began working as a caterer.

“If I’m honest, I always did not want to open a restaurant because it makes me very afraid,” Hernandez said, adding that he has not gotten much sleep recently.

He changed his mind when he grew tired of renting out commercial kitchens for his catering business. He chose to grow his business in Chamblee because he sees it as “the last [town] un-destroyed by big corporations inside the perimeter.”

The chef hopes that his business will attract residents of Chamblee and nearby Brookhaven and Buckhead to the often deserted downtown Chamblee in the evenings.

To keep prices down for future customers, Hernandez has completed much of the work on his restaurant himself, building the drywall, laying down the floors in the kitchen and even painting the interior walls with his own two hands.

“It’ll look good in the end but I think people will value a place that looks great, you feelt good and you get a good value for your meal,” Hernandez said. 

Union Hill Kitchen will open for lunch in mid-August and for dinner as well shortly after.

“I’m excited to be here and I hope that the community here likes everything and that people enjoy it,” Hernandez said.

Union Hill Kitchen is at 5336 Peachtree Road; Phone: (312) 375-0141.