They would just need to travel some thirteen hundred miles, to Los Angeles, where the restaurants were located. She wanted to spread the word about her two restaurants, the Nayarit and Nayarit II, where customers could count on excellent service and delicious, freshly prepared food. In 1965, Natalia Barraza placed a full-page advertisement in her hometown newspaper, El Eco de Nayarit. What follows is an excerpt from the book’s introduction. Molina received a short-term Huntington fellowship to conduct research on the book. In her most recent book, A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community (University of California Press, 2022), Molina argues that the Nayarit served as a place where ethnic Mexicans and other Latinx LA residents could step into the fullness of their lives, nourishing themselves and one another. She also serves on The Huntington’s Board of Governors. Today, Molina is a distinguished professor of American studies and ethnicity at USC, a 2020 MacArthur fellow, and a 2020–21 National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at The Huntington. Beloved for its fresh, traditionally prepared Mexican food, it drew a broad clientele, including restaurant workers from across the city and Hollywood stars. Natalia Molina grew up in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park and spent evenings at the Mexican restaurant her mother owned, the Nayarit, a local landmark that her grandmother founded in 1951. Cover of A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community (University of California Press, 2022).

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