BELCHERTOWN — Before chef Saul Ayala cooked in decorated Italian restaurants and high-end bars in Boston, Dallas and New York City, he learned about working in a kitchen from his cousin Roberto Saravia, owner of Masa Mexicano in Florence.

A decade later, at Masa Mexicano’s new location in Belchertown at 9 North Main St., the two cousins once again cook in the same kitchen, only this time Ayala is the one at the helm schooling Saravia.

“Coming back to here and actually taking the command of his restaurant, everything is so different,” Ayala said. “It’s like, “Where have you been? How is it that you don’t know these things?’”

Ayala is just one of the familial additions to Masa Mexicano. Richly colored prints by Saravia’s uncle, Vinicio Ayala, lines the walls of the new space, right next to Saravia’s own take on his uncle’s style.

Maria-Carolina Arias, Saravia’s wife, sends her husband out of the kitchen when she’s cooking the Salvadorian specials for the menu, injecting Saravia’s roots directly into his restaurant’s Mexican cuisine.

It’s been five years since Saravia spent his life savings to open up his first restaurant right as the world went into lockdown. He weathered the storm of the pandemic and has remained a hot spot in Florence for five years. He hadn’t planned to open another restaurant, but when the opportunity presented itself, Saravia saw it as a chance to bring his food, and family, to a place looking exactly for those things.

“I’m not looking to make money, I’m just looking to give employment to a lot of people who need jobs,” Saravia said. “I think that’s very important to me and to be fair with everybody. I treat them like I wish I was treated when I came up working in restaurants.”

When setting out to open his own restaurant, Saravia settled on Mexican cuisine over the food he grew up with in El Salvador due to people’s existing familiarity with the cuisine. Despite the food from the two countries sharing many base ingredients, Ayala discovered that Mexican food leans heavier into spices than the food he grew up with.

“When I went to Mexico, we would be walking on the street and tasting tacos from every single corner and I would see the local people waiting for their food. I walked for four or five hours,” he said. “I was never into the Mexican experience of cooking until that trip. The spiciness, the chilies that he (Saravia) used here and everything, it definitely motivated me to come back to cook here.”

Honoring the traditional Mexican cuisine, Saravia and Ayala cook everything from scratch, pressing corn tortillas by hand each morning with heirloom corn sources from small family farms in Oaxaca, Mexico. The tacos are served traditionally, with only onions and cilantro to garish the richly-flavored meats stewed in a mixture of spices and herbs.

“I think that’s really important to me, making everything from scratch and using fresh ingredients,” Saravia said. “I love pretty much my whole menu. There’s probably not one item in there I would be willing to part with it, because everything has their own unique characteristics.”

Since Saravia opts for corn tortillas over flour ones, 95% of the menu is gluten-free. In addition to the classic slow-cooked chicken tinga, al pastor and beef barbacoa, a vegan chorizo made of walnuts and mushrooms is available for those wishing to cut down on meat but retain the same rich Mexican flavors.

“The vegan chorizo is very, very flavorful,” Saravia said. “It actually competes a lot with all the other proteins. When we’re first coming out with the vegan chorizo recipe, we didn’t know how popular it was going to be.”

Besides the hours of operation, not too much differs between the Belchertown and Florence locations. Saravia said he plans to apply for a beer and wine license in Belchertown, as he did in Northampton, and begin offering specials once his kitchen staff gets acquainted with the space.

“There’s pretty much no Mexican restaurants in Belchertown, so I thought that might be a good addition to the town,” Saravia said. “Everybody has been loving the food so far, and it makes me happy.”

Masa Mexicano is open seven days a week from 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday and 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Sunday.

Emilee Klein can be reached at eklein@gazettenet.com.