ATLANTA — Eddie Hernandez, the award-winning chef and co-owner of the popular Taqueria del Sol restaurants in Georgia and Tennessee, didn’t plan on cooking. At 17, he emigrated from Mexico to play music.

“I ate badly, slept little, couldn’t find a girlfriend who believed I was faithful,” he said, laughing.

After pursuing the musician’s life for over a decade, he was ready for a change. So Hernandez took a job as a waiter instead at an Atlanta-area restaurant called El Azteca. When he told the managing partner, Mike Klank, — "who's 100 percent American from Memphis, Tennessee," that the Mexican food they served was all wrong, he was put in charge of the kitchen.

Decades later, Hernandez and Klank have seven locations across Georgia and into Tennessee and they've been nominated for multiple James Beard awards.