When Ingrid and Nancy Rivas were about 12, relatives started teaching them to cook. The twin sisters grew up in El Salvador. They remember the flavors of their childhood… and above all, the love.

“Our mother and grandmothers loved to cook,” Nancy Rivas told me last week. “They told us, ‘When you grow up, you’re going to make these things for your children, for the people you love.’”

Today, Ingrid Rivas cooks nonstop, along with her business partner, Cristonfer Cruz, at the restaurant the two run, the Posada Grill on the Mohawk Trail in Shelburne. They specialize in Salvadoran and Mexican cuisine. Her sister manages the front of the house, handling personnel and customer relations.

“We like to stay there,” Ingrid Rivas said with a laugh, pointing to the eatery’s kitchen. 

I asked about the name “Posada.” The sisters explained that it stemmed from gatherings in Mexico that traditionally take place during the week before Christmas.

A posada is a gathering in which people go from door to door singing songs and carols to remind people of the Christmas story, in which Mary and Joseph were denied room at the inn. (The word posada means “inn.”)

The people in the houses formally deny the procession accommodation but then go on to provide the wanderers with food and music, sharing their hospitality. Ingrid Rivas said that to her a posada is a comfortable place where people can get together. She and Cruz see their restaurant as such a place, she noted.

Her sister added, “People feel welcome to come here and feel happy to eat our food.”

Nancy Rivas explained that the co-owners and chefs have worked hard to teach each other their favorite dishes so that the menu stays consistent whoever is manning the stove.

“They don’t want to lose the flavors,” she elaborated, explaining that the pair’s knowledge and skill sets are complementary.

“A restaurant is like a heart. They are a really good team. They have the same goals.”

Cruz and Rivas opened the restaurant in September 2020, right in the heart of the pandemic. They started small with a take-out menu, then added tables as the government allowed.

The restaurant has done so well that the team recently added a second dining room, put in colorful new décor and got a full liquor license. They hope in the future to open more branches of the restaurant, explained the sisters, but first they want to make sure that the original Posada is the best it can be.

“This is my baby,” Ingrid Rivas said of the enterprise.

The trick of perfecting Posada, said Nancy Rivas, is to keep the quality up in terms of both the food and the personnel. “It’s really hard to find staff that wants to work and that loves the taste,” she elaborated.

Luckily, the Rivas sisters have a lot of relatives. One of their cousins was working as a waitress when we stopped in. Whether the employees are family or not, Ingrid Rivas and Cristonfer Cruz like to think of them that way.

I certainly felt very much at home as I chatted with the Rivas sisters and tucked into a plate of Enchiladas Divorciadas. These enchiladas are called divorced because one side of the platter is topped with a classic ranchera sauce and the other with salsa verde.

The two formerly united sides of the plate are separated by a thin line of flavored sour cream.

I asked whether this was the sisters’ favorite dish. Nancy Rivas said that she liked it a lot but that her personal choice was the fajita platter. “It’s a really perfect meal,” she sighed.

Ingrid Rivas smiled. “I have a lot of favorites,” she announced.

Posada Salsa Verde

Ingrid Rivas shared with readers the recipe for the salsa verde (“green sauce”) she and Cruz use on the enchilada platter we tried. She usually makes a large quantity of this sauce but has tried to scale down the recipe for home use.

Ingredients:

2 pounds tomatillos

1 cup chopped onion

up to 1/2 cup chopped jalapeños

salt to taste

Instructions:

First, remove the husks of the tomatillos and rinse them well to remove any stickiness. Bring a large pot of water to the boil, add the tomatillos and boil them until they soften. (This could take as little as five minutes.)

Drain the tomatillos, let them cool for a minute or two, and combine them with the other ingredients in a blender. Start with a couple of jalapeños and just a little salt; then taste the mixture and add more of either ingredient as needed.

Makes about 3 cups of salsa verde, depending on how many jalapeños you use. Refrigerate leftover salsa.

Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning author and singer. Her next book will be “Pot Luck: Random Acts of Cooking.” Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.

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