By Chef Alexis Hernandez
Someone recently asked what I wanted readers to walk away with after reading What the Pan Remembers.
The honest answer is that I wanted readers to know me beyond the usual biography. A short biography can say that I owned Union Hill Kitchen, appeared on Food Network and wrote Conversation Starters. Those facts are true, but they do not explain how I make decisions or what I notice when no one is asking me to perform.
Those were the parts of myself I wanted to put on the page.
What the Pan Remembers contains 28 personal essays arranged in six parts. They come from the life I have actually lived as the son of Cuban parents, a chef and a Christian. I kept those details because they are true. A reader does not need the same background to understand the experiences around them.
The Half Hour Before Guests Arrive
A friend who read a proof copy recently showed me what that could mean.
In one essay, I write about the half hour before people arrive for a dinner party. Once the room was prepared and the cooking was under control, I would sit in my leather chair with a martini and two olives. Dinah Washington or Diana Krall usually played in the background. I liked having the room to myself before the first guest arrived.
My friend told me that she does the same thing. She also takes about half an hour to sit quietly and enjoy the room before her guests arrive. She said that she saw herself in that essay.
What I Hope Readers Recognize
Her response mattered because she did not mention the menu or anything I served. She recognized a private habit we shared without either of us knowing it.
Ordinary moments can stay with us for years before we understand why they mattered.
Her response showed me what I had hoped for while writing the book. The details belong to my life, but a reader may find something familiar inside them.
I do not expect everyone to understand every decision I made. Readers may disagree with me, and some stories may affect them differently than I intended. I would rather allow that than shape every essay into an argument in my defense.
The book moves through restaurant kitchens, family kitchens and homes connected to different periods of my life. Food gives the stories a setting, but much of the book concerns what happened around it. I write about work, family, faith, identity, ambition and loss because all of them entered the kitchen with me.
Writing the essays also required me to decide what deserved a record. We take photographs and videos of the occasions we expect to remember. The moments that remain with us are not always the ones we planned to preserve. Sometimes it is the quiet before a party, what was left in a pan after dinner or a decision made while standing at the stove.
I hope readers think about moments from their own lives that were never photographed because no one knew they would matter later. The connection may come from a part of the story I never expected them to notice.
When my friend told me that she saw herself in the essay, I had an answer to the question. I hope other readers recognize something of their own too.
The eBook edition of What the Pan Remembers: Essays from the Other Side of the Stove by Chef Alexis Hernandez is available for preorder now.
Hardcover and paperback editions will go on sale October 7, 2026.
Hardcover and paperback formats will be available through Amazon and The Other Side of the Stove.
