A love of cooking, passed from mother to daughter

Boston Globe

07-05-2025

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It makes sense, too. None of us would be in this kitchen today without Rivera.
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Motherhood is what brought her, husband Miguel, and their three small children to the United States in 1992 from Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico. Pregnant with their fourth, Rivera developed placenta previa, requiring medical care she couldn't get at home. 'I came here and went straight from the airplane to the hospital,' she says. Six months later, a healthy boy named Eliezer was born. Amarilys, the third child after siblings Miguel and Brenda, was in first grade at the time. She spoke no English when she arrived. No one in the family did. They eventually settled in Belmont.
'When Amarylis was not in school, she was going into the kitchen with me, watching me cook,' Rivera remembers. 'When we were together, all the family, with the uncles, aunts, and everyone coming, I had the big pot and we would cook a lot every time.' No matter what else was on the menu, there was a constant: arroz con habichuelas, or rice and beans. 'Every time, it was rice or rice and beans with something else.'
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Gladys Rivera's rice and beans, prepared at La Padrona. When executive chef Amarilys Colón was growing up, the dish was always on the table.
Lane Turner/Globe Staff
For Colón, the dish is a tie to both childhood and her Puerto Rican heritage. 'Everybody always wanted to be in the kitchen, and I'll always remember the loud, fun chaos. We have a big family in Puerto Rico, and we'd have big get-togethers at my grandmother's house,' she says. 'When I was little, I wanted to be next to my mom all the time, so I got the first smells all the time, the first tastes of everything. It was always centered around rice, pork — we call it pernil — and a lot of root veggies.'
When Colón was growing up, rice and beans were on the table so often she can remember asking her mother to please make something else for a change. Now it's just the opposite: '
Can
you make the rice and beans? For me, it's 100 percent about staying connected to my roots. If we make a batch of beans, the aromas remind me of my grandmother, my aunts and uncles, certain experiences,' she says. 'I come from something pretty cool.'
Food was always important to the chef, and central to family life, but it wasn't until she was in her mid-20s that she decided she wanted to make it her career. 'Something in me clicked and I wanted to get closer to food, whatever that meant. I didn't know what that meant at that point,' she says.
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She was working as a manager at Starbucks, making good money. 'I remember having a conversation with my mom, like, 'Mom, I'm going to take a huge pay cut and I'm going to be a line cook.'' Colón laughs. 'She thought I was crazy.'
But Rivera adds, 'I said, whatever she wanted, because she is like that.' Determined.
'She worked so hard —
hard
. She did everything by herself. If she likes something, she goes through it: I want that, I'm going to do that.'
La Padrona executive chef Amarilys Colón tastes beans made by her mother, Gladys Rivera.
Lane Turner/Globe Staff
Colón began working at Vicki Lee's in Belmont, a front of the house management job, with the condition that she would get into the kitchen any chance she got. She cooked for catering events and eventually got prep time in the kitchen; if she came in early enough, chef Jason Reed would call her into the back to fillet fish with him. She sought out stages, or kitchen internships, wherever she could. She had started working part-time at Figs in Beacon Hill when one of the regulars at Vicki Lee's offered to connect her with a high-profile local chef she knew. Colón said yes.
That chef was Jody Adams, of restaurants including Trade, Porto, and, as of last May,
She needed some help at Porto, so Colón started there. 'It was my first official, guns-blazing kitchen experience, in 2017 or 2018,' Colón says. 'I started as a line cook. They put me on the hardest station. It was pasta. That's where I got all my burns, all my cuts, all my beautiful scars. I took the T in and I'd listen to music to hype me up. I'd think: I'm going to nail tonight's service. I have to do it.'
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She did it, working her way up to sous chef, then executive sous chef. And then came La Padrona.
'She came, and she was so green, but clearly there is a fire in her and a determination. She went through a really rough up and down at Porto and just kept working,' Adams says of Colón. 'My job now in all of the restaurants is to meet, eat, and mentor. And to really push our chefs to be the best they can be in paying attention to the details of what they do — what's really successful, but also where their challenges are.'
Back in the kitchen at La Padrona, Rivera stirs the pot of beans, rice ready and waiting. Each turn of the spoon brings with it a waft of aromas: the smoky browned ham; the spice blend sazón, bright orange with annatto; sofrito, the mixture of peppers, herbs, and garlic that is a backbone of Puerto Rican cuisine. Whatever else goes into the dish, its flavor is always there, underlying and propping up the other ingredients.
'She is my biggest supporter, my rock, and while she knows what I do, she rarely gets to see it up close,' Colón says of her mother. Having her here in the kitchen is special. 'It was a moment of pride, love, and gratitude, showing her where I am now, and how far her unwavering support and love have carried me.'
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Then we sit down to eat.
Devra First can be reached at