A Place at the Nayarit is an intimate exploration into the meaning that food spaces have in Latinx immigrant communities. The Nayarit was what Molina describes as a foundational “place making” space that fostered rich fictive kin ties within Los Angeles and Mexico. The restaurant was first established as a business around 1943, and this book focuses primarily on the Nayarit location in Echo Park on Los Angeles’s Sunset Street which opened in 1951. This restaurant was meticulously run by Molina’s grandmother, Natalia Barraza, who operated as a well-connected figure in the neighborhood’s Latinx community. In fact, the Nayarit was quite unique because it was created and maintained by a single Mexican woman in a time where immigration and city policies targeted and scrutinized single Mexican women in the United States.

This restaurant, named after Barraza’s hometown Nayarit, was a Mexican establishment that proudly cooked Nayarit Mexican food—an important distinction...

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