HOUSTON – They say behind every successful man is a strong woman, and for Christian Hernandez, owner and head chef of Barbacana, which recently opened in downtown Houston, it’s his mother.
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Although the 34-year-old has learned from some of the best and cut his teeth at the city’s most influential restaurants like the Michelin-starred March, Oxheart, and Indigo, Hernandez is quick to remind everyone that he hasn’t forgotten where he came from. Nor has he forgotten that his mother, Carmen Aguilar, was the catalyst for his love of the culinary arts.
“I always start the story about my mom kind of influencing me as far as cooking with the unfortunate truth that she was actually a very terrible chef,” he joked. “She was raising two boys, didn’t have a lot of time to learn all the ins and outs of cooking, so she took it upon herself to take us to different places.”
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One of the first things Hernandez remembers trying for the first time was sushi, but it was the natural curiosity to taste new foods that became the genesis for what would later turn into his career. Before that, however, Hernandez admitted he was studying veterinary medicine and despite several jobs in restaurants, even at a young age, never thought becoming a chef was in the cards.
“Since I was like 8 years old, I was, like, ‘I’m going to be a veterinarian,’ and I’ll cook on the side,‘" he recalled. “My first cooking job was when I was 14, so I was always in and out of kitchens, but it wasn’t like a profession to me."
It finally hit Hernandez toward the end of his college career while working at a restaurant where, of all things, the fresh bread was what brought his epiphany.
“I was working at this one restaurant that was making their own bread like fresh every day, and it wasn’t even like the taste of the bread —it was just walking into that kitchen and like I got like oh just every day I would walk in and just a big waft of you know fresh bread smell just hitting you right through the door...Just walking into this door every day and just hit with that first smell of fresh bread, I was like, ‘I could walk into this every day.’"
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To be fair, there’s nothing that beats the smell of fresh bread — any kind, tortillas, parathas, or just Italian sandwich bread — but I can’t say they’ve been as life-changing as it was for Hernandez.
“Then I had one semester left in college, but that’s when I left and headed directly to culinary school here in Houston,” he said. “I later just packed up and moved to New York and didn’t have any job lined up. I was just like, ‘Let’s go for it; I want some experience.’"
Like any parent, Hernandez admitted his mother was naturally concerned, but her support for him outweighed any apprehension. The same couldn’t be said for his grandmother.
"She was she was, very upset,“ Hernadez recalled. ”She’s like, ‘You can’t go, don’t go, you have to stay, and my mom’s like ‘No, he should go, he’s young enough, he doesn’t have anything holding him back.'"
After gaining a plethora of experience at some of the best restaurants in New York — a few of them unpaid, that his mom may not know about until/unless she reads this article (sorry Ms. Aguilar). In the end, however, it was worth it because Hernandez opened his own restaurant, called Barbacana, in the heart of downtown Houston this past April.
The restaurant’s namesake is meant to serve as an inclusive atmosphere.
“It’s not a word that’s often used in Spanish, but a barbacana, or barbican in English, is like a defensive structure, like a parapet outside of a castle," Hernandez explained. “So it kind of invokes like a meaning of just security and like comfort, synonymous to a bastion; the place that you fall back to whenever all else fails."
Despite his restaurant serving as a fine dining establishment, Hernandez sought to move away from what one might consider an “elitist” mindset. For example, there’s no dress code.
“I think a lot of tasting menu at restaurants in general comes with a level of kind of like almost snobbiness,“ he admitted. ”And I wanted to get rid of as much of that as possible and just bring people the food, like to the caliber that I’ve been trained to do, to the level that I’ve done for so long, but in a more approachable, comfortable environment."
This was important for Hernandez to have an amicable setting because he remembered his early supporters (like his mother and friends) and did not want something like a price tag preventing someone from trying and enjoying new foods.
“None of my friends worked in restaurants they were coming up in oil and gas or something else that you need a degree for and I would see them very infrequently, but the places that I worked were generally not places where they could come and eat every week or every month even, they were just very expensive,” Hernandez explained. “So in a way, a lot of it was so I could have this space that my friends and my family could come, and just spend time here without dropping $500 a person.”
By no means is this meant to throw shade at other fine dining establishments with dress codes.
“There’s a time and a place for everything," Hernandez noted. “There’s time and place for McDonald’s; there is a time and a place for 11 Madison Park [in New York]...I guess at the end of the day, I don’t want to just cook for the people who can afford to blow so much money on one meal, I want to cook for everyone, so yes, we do have the Tasting Menu, but we also have an A La Carte Menu that is pretty affordable, and then we have a Bar Snacks Menu that’s extremely affordable,” he continued. “So we purposely wanted to hit all the levels so that we can offer something to anyone that comes in the door, and that, if my cook’s family wants to come in, she can come in; they don’t have to worry about breaking the bank for it."
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As for Hernandez’s mother, she seems to be proud of the work he’s done.
“I didn’t pick her brain too much, but I mean, she loves the food, obviously,” he concluded. “She actually brought her boss here a week or two ago, so I guess she felt confident enough to bring them there, but no, she’s very supportive. She’s a fan of all of it.”
If you’re looking to bring your mother, your children’s mom, or a maternal-like figure, Barbacana has some Mother’s Day specials that you can check out by clicking here. Or if you’re interested in just learning more about the restaurant and making a reservation at another date, visit their website.