Nailah Hayward

Nailah Hayward grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA that sadly had a sever lack of any sort of Latin American culture.  A city where the chain restaurant Chi-Chi’s was the height of Mexican cuisine. But don’t hold that against her – she eventually escaped to Washington, DC for university where she did her best to support the Mexican cantina closest to her dorm by doing a brisk business in tortilla chips and the best tequila a work-study salary could buy.

Her experiences with tequila and margaritas continued to improved as she (a) stopped having to use a fake ID (b) moved to Houston with access to quality Tex-Mex restaurants and then (c) moved to Southern California with more delicious cantinas and restaurants serving all makes of tequila.  

Living in Los Angeles, Nailah found a good friend in Andreanna Iakovidis who shared a love of travel, Capoeira and happy hour drinks!  They both quickly noticed that their happy hour venue usually ended up being at Mexican cantinas and an idea was formed.  Since they were checking out so many margaritas around the LA area, why not begin to take official note of the great (and not so great) margaritas we find at home and on the road??  And so the idea of the With or Without Salt blog was born. Nailah will do her best to give an impartial and relatively sober review of any margarita (on the rocks, with salt) that comes across her path.  Join her on the journey.  Viva, tequila!