We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Daniel Castro. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Daniel below.

Daniel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

I have been able to earn a full time living from my creative work, thankfully. There’s not a shortage of people who love good food here in Austin.

I started out as a line cook at Uchiko here in Austin. I worked my way up as a sushi chef, and it was the perfect segue to becoming a personal chef and even I didn’t know it at the time. I was going to leave around March of 2020, but SXSW got cancelled because of COVID and we knew that it was getting real. Thankfully, the company was busy enough to give me a job and it allowed me to meal prep in people’s homes as well, to build a portfolio, per se.

It wasn’t from day one, but I also did a weight loss challenge and won it. So people got ahold of that information and that I cooked for a living, so they asked me if I could meal prep for them and I immediately said yes. It definitely started from there.

When I left Uchiko around December 2020, it was the weirdest reset. I thought I was going to be a hot commodity but in fact, I had to work three times as hard. So, I had money saved up and looked up every lead generator that I could. I lucked out eventually as I got introduced to companies like Gather and Forge and The Austin Artisan here as well as other personal chefs in the area who I could help out while I was building my own brand. I guess I became a knife for hire, in that sense. But I got to build my own schedule, which was ultimately the thing that I wanted.

Fastfoward to now, I’m doing a Filipino Rice Bowl popup here in Austin called Manila Rice. Because it was a spinoff on Jollibee and for the lack of better words, I’m upset that they don’t have one here but they have outposts in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. So, I decided to do them a favor and do one here myself, but better. It recently got featured on Eater, so now I’m trying to keep it alive – constant marketing, purchasing, looking for kitchens… things that chefs are supposed to do to be able to sell food. I really haven’t had experience in the area so I’m learning everything on the fly, but I’m using my experiences in life and kitchen to mitigate any kind of mistakes that I could make in that moment.

I honestly don’t think I could speed up the process. I mean, I could but that would mean that sacrificing everything that I’ve planned this year and I certainly don’t want to do that. The way I see it, if I can’t take care of myself then I can’t provide or give the people what they want. It’s a two way street, and I’d rather have it that way. As an avid sports fan and a wanna-be athlete, I know what it’s like to play to the crowd but as we all know, the best ones play to their strengths and make their name in that manner.

Daniel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I got into the industry because I had no path coming out of high school. I knew I liked to play tennis, and as a cliche, I would apply to every UC (but not a state school) because I wanted to be like the cool kids. Unfortunately, none of the UCs wanted me. But, I was watching a lot of cooking competition shows at the time and it’s something that caught my interest full stop. So, coincidentally, when I walked into my home economics class, my now mentor gave me a thick stack of paperwork to compete for a scholarship to culinary school through the Careers Through the Culinary Arts Program (C-CAP) and eventually went to the Culinary Institute of America.

Currently, I am a knife for hire. So I work for various private chef companies in Austin, Texas. I also run a Jollibee inspired popup here called Manila Rice. It only makes sense. Rice bowls are definitely a good thing. For that to get started, I started meal prepping at people at my CrossFit gym and it eventually grew from there from working to several personal chef companies around Austin eventually gaining financial access to do my own thing.

What sets me apart from others is being Filipino. Weird to say, but it’s true. There are not a lot of Filipino Food places in Austin, so I’m trying to take advantage of it in my own way by putting my own stamp on it. So far, the reception has been great about it.

What I’m most proud of is that I’m now cooking the food that I want to cook and it makes people happy. I feel like I get to do the things I want to do – running my own kitchen, traveling, etc. I want people to know that there is a place for Filipino Food in the mainstream dining scene and I, along with a lot of Filipino chefs are here for that party!

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

There’s this stigma about mental health lately where people think that going to therapists seem like they are off in the head. I mean, a lot of us, especially in the culinary industry, are. And that’s the truth. But there are so many things I’m trying to unlearn from my restaurant days, like stress management and not yelling at people. Not that I do it, but I’m trying to be more patient with myself in terms of these kinds of things. Now that I’m running my own thing, I need to put myself in a lot of people’s shoes and show them the right direction because it’s how I would have wanted to be treated. But I am seeing a therapist, and I’ve aligned goals for myself on a whiteboard that are my core values. If it’s off even by a little bit, I have to assess how I can be better. But it’s one of those things where my friend sent me the website and I just started exploring it, and now here we are.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I’ve always wanted to do Filipino Food, but somehow I always felt like I needed permission in general to do anything that I wanted to do. Away from laws, and such, I’m coming to a realization that nothing’s really stopping me if I colored within the lines.

It also helped that when I went to Aspen and shot the Jollibee video with Josh Weissman that I decided to go for it full swing. The next thing I know, Eater Austin features me and I finally have the wheels to go into it. There’s that momentum, but then I had to go to a wedding.

So, restarting that and figuring it all out is a little bit of why I play this game – I want to give people what they want and cure their nostalgia in a sense. After all, Jollibee is that place where they have a story behind it in their life for whatever reason and now that I”m here to bring it, it’s so much more satisfying.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.eversoulculinary.com
• Instagram: @eversoulculinary
• Facebook:Eversoul Culinary
• Linkedin: Daniel Castro