Stand in front of 1822 Sunset Blvd., and you’ll see the old sign for the Nayarit restaurant, but where a banner below used to proclaim “authentic Mexican dining,” there’s a marquee advertising upcoming shows at the Echo nightclub. It’s a typical L.A. palimpsest — one history layered over traces of another — and the earlier one is worth knowing.
For more than 20 years beginning in 1951, the Nayarit helped define Echo Park. It provided work opportunities for well over 100 people, served delicious, authentic Mexican food, and fostered a diverse community of Latinx immigrants and others who met and mixed in the restaurant’s dining room, open 10 a.m. till 4 a.m, seven days a week.
The Nayarit was the creation of my grandmother, Doña Natalia Barraza. My mother, María, was her right-hand assistant in the business. I never knew Doña Natalia, but I grew up with my brother in the house that she was able to purchase, a member of a community she helped forge, and I was buoyed by the success of what she built over her 48 years in the United States. Doña Natalia came to Los Angeles in 1921 and went on to open three restaurants, but the Echo Park Nayarit was the largest and the most long-lived. Well after Barraza died, even after my mother gave up the restaurant lease, it anchored our life in L.A.
