Kitchens to Communities

Dining out became a defining feature of modern California and the United States after World War II. This was not only through corporate expansion powered by changes in agricultural and trade policies, franchising, and women’s demands for alternatives to home cooking, but also through the labor, entrepreneurship, and community-building of migrants. Kitchens to Communities examines the intertwined rise of migrant labor and the restaurant industry in California. Allison Varzally traces how immigrant workers moved from agricultural fields into urban kitchens and fast-food chains, expanding the range of restaurants and shaping belonging in the multicultural region. She reveals these public, but intimate, spaces to be economic footholds, where neighborhoods were reshaped and larger social concerns about hunger and unemployment, women’s work and opportunities, and the place of immigrants were negotiated. Ultimately, the book centers the role of immigrant labor in transforming not only Californians’ eating habits but also California’s larger food culture, society, and even politics.