The career of Chef Zarela Martinez and a changing Mexican foodscape in New York City, 1981–2011

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article discusses Mexican food’s proliferation in New York City from the 1980s onward and focuses specifically on the career of Zarela Martinez, an immigrant Mexican chef who achieved renown by serving haute regional Mexican dishes in her Manhattan restaurant. Martinez rose to celebrity through a confluence of circumstances and spent her career confronting stereotypes about Mexican food as inherently simple, fast, and cheap. Arguing instead for its elevation as a complex and refined global cuisine, Martinez became a culinary tastemaker and place-maker for Mexican-origin communities in New York. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed an influx of migration from Mexico to the Northeast and wider United States, and many of these newcomers opened their own bodegas, bakeries, taco trucks, and tortilla factories throughout New York City’s boroughs. Together with higher-end restaurants like Martinez’s, these entrepreneurs helped constitute a blossoming and heterogenous Mexican foodscape for a metropolis hungry for new and exciting food. Tracing Martinez’s career against this backdrop of migration and a growing national obsession with Mexican cuisine, this article fills gaps in the histories of Mexican food’s spread in the U.S. Northeast, Latinas’ food-related labor and creativity, and immigrant entrepreneurship.