Daniel Castillo’s knuckles are tattooed with the word “barbecue.”
It sounds hardcore. But when you taste Heritage Barbecue’s succulent brisket you begin to understand Castillo’s devotion. The art of barbecue is a test of dedication. It’s long, hard, dirty work but the results are transcendent for those who take the time to learn the craft.
This chef-driven focus is how Castillo and his team approach the menu at Heritage Barbecue in San Juan Capistrano.
Meats are sourced from conscious purveyors such as West Coast Prime, who offer a selection of Duroc pork ribs and Creekstone Farms brisket. Then, they are smoked slowly overnight and left to rest for eight to 10 hours before being hand-sliced to order.
“Our meat sees the sunlight and the moonlight,” writes Castillo in an Instagram post early one morning not long after dawn. He’s not joking. The night crew tends the pits for 12-14 hours, sitting by the smokers just waiting and watching. It’s a marathon endeavor and a test of patience. But for true pitmasters, this time passes by almost like a meditation. Some of the greatest stories emerge when you’re sitting by the coals in the moonlight.
This is one of them.
***
Daniel and Brenda Castillo opened Heritage Barbecue’s brick-and-mortar location last year during the pandemic. Doubling down on the obstacles, the couple also learned that they were pregnant with their third child moments before they left on a scouting trip to Texas. The baby wasn’t planned, but the couple forged on. Their youngest son, Daniel, was born in June 2020; Heritage Barbecue opened a couple months later, on Aug. 8.
As Brenda remembers those days, wisps of her long, dark curly hair blow against her cheek. She pulls them away from her face, careful not to disturb her signature red lipstick.
“When we started this, we sat down and had a heart to heart,” she recalls. “It was like, ‘Let’s divide and conquer.’ We’re both going to be stressed to the max. You’re going to have to manage a restaurant as a baby and I’m going to have a legit baby.”
Daniel is the dreamer. But Brenda is all about getting stuff done. “I’m a big planner. I like to think ahead,” she says. “I want to be intentional. When you open a restaurant, when you open any business, it’s going to be stressful. I’m sure we were going to have arguments, regardless. But I’m all about ‘How is this helping?’ Let’s be constructive.” The couple – together for more than two decades – are no strangers to adversity.
Brenda and Daniel met as teenagers. “I was the older guy with the car,” he says with a smirk.
“I just wanted to date someone who could drive my friends around,” she says.
The relationship of convenience blossomed – quickly. “We got pregnant,” they say simultaneously.
Aware of the challenges, the couple chose to have the baby. Their daughter Carina, now 21 years old, also works at Heritage Barbecue. “I was their first kid and their first employee,” Carina says. The couple also has a 13-year-old son named Benjamin.
At the time, Brenda and Daniel reflected a countywide issue. According to the 26th annual report on the conditions of children in Orange County, the statistics for teenage parents in 2009 indicate that 25.3 percent of mothers were aged 15-19. By 2018, that figure, fortunately, had dropped to 8.3 percent. Despite the odds, the Castillos stayed together.
“I was involved in drugs, alcohol – that sort of thing,” says Castillo. “She saved me.”
As he pulls up his baseball cap and wipes his brow with the back of his hand, Castillo’s dark brown eyes glance lovingly at Brenda. Instinctively, she sits next to him, and holding their youngest son in her arms, she says, “I made him more responsible. I made him realize he was worth it. Not that he didn’t think that. But I grew up in a more structured family, more disciplined. Not that his mother wasn’t, but she was a single mom. My mom and dad were divorced, but it was structured.
“We both came from broken families, and that’s why we have tried so hard all these years. It’s been a lot of fun though, sometimes too much fun. That’s how we got this guy,” she points down to their son Danny nursing under a black cloth dotted with white cacti.
“She was the breadwinner for years,” Castillo adds. After becoming a mom, Brenda worked in the banking industry while Castillo stumbled to find his way. “He really can do anything he puts his mind to,” she says. “He honestly can cook anything.”
“It’s because I grew up poor,” he says with a chuckle. “You had to figure out something.”
Castillo likens his childhood cooking style to “Chopped,” the Food Network TV show where contestants are asked to create meals out of odd pantry ingredients. Brenda recognized his talent. At one point, when Castillo was in between jobs, she encouraged him to attend culinary school.
He excelled at Orange Coast College. “I was one of the best in my class,” he recalls. “Brenda ate really well during that time. I’d bring home all this great food.”
There was just one problem: Castillo never graduated from high school. To enter OCC, he forged his transcripts, but later was caught.
“I qualified for some grant money and scholarships,” he says. “Then the school found out.”
So began his atonement. He returned the money and apologized for the forgery. The incident didn’t waver his passion for cooking. He graduated and held numerous kitchen jobs. Eventually, he earned a cushy corporate chef position at Whole Foods. After seven years, he had good benefits and could make his own schedule. Yet, something was missing.
Nostalgic childhood trips to Texas came flooding back. Castillo began researching barbecue online and studied the technique with the help of YouTube videos and Alton Brown reruns. He trekked to Texas to hone his taste buds and soak in the tradition.
“It introduced me to real barbecue. Even though I grew up in California, I’ve always been partial to Southern flavors.” During one barbecue pilgrimage, he stumbled onto Brett’s Backyard BBQ in Austin. “This was something special, something different,” says Castillo. “It was balanced. I wanted to learn how they did it.”
Castillo was enchanted. He asked to apprentice with the pitmaster. During that short time, he absorbed the knowledge. “That’s when I realized I was already on the right track,” he says.
Fueled by his research, Castillo returned to Westminster with a revived sense of purpose.
In 2012, he started hosting weekend cookouts. Using a Brinkmann smoker that resembled R2-D2, Castillo began tinkering. He was perfecting his spin on Central Texas-style barbecue.
What started as a backyard hobby drew attention from his neighbors. Soon, Vietnamese-American families were lining up for his food and advertising his barbecue on social media. Then Castillo forged a series of pop-ups at local breweries. The Bruery in Anaheim, Green Cheek, Chapman Crafted and Haven Craft Kitchen & Bar in Orange hosted events featuring Heritage Barbecue.
“Daniel and the entire Heritage team impressed me with their unique approach to barbecue in our area,” says Wil Dee, co-founder of Chapman Crafted and founder of Haven Craft Kitchen & Bar. “Heritage utilized the pop-ups to improve their processes, their customer service and popularity. Everything they learned along the way greatly contributed to their current success. It’s great to be part of their story.”
“It honestly all started because Brenda and I really like craft beer,” says Castillo. “I was hanging out at the breweries and talking with them. I became friends with a lot of brewers. But I didn’t want to be a food truck. I wanted to make an event out of it.”
The beers became part of Castillo’s barbecue. “Anytime I need stock to build a sauce, I could just use beer instead and the flavors were unique,” he says. At Whole Foods, Castillo had prepared a series of beer dinners, so he was comfortable cooking with different varieties.
“Then came the copycats,” he says. “It was flattering, but then we really needed to do something that was going to make us different.”
For one pop-up, he reduced down a corn ale to enhance the beer’s nutty, sweet flavor. Castillo, along with Heritage’s current chef de cuisine Nicholas Echaore, infused their pickles with local craft beer. The pickles are an often-overlooked element to the meal, but the acidity is crucial. It helps balance the unctuous fattiness of the meat.
“We make all our pickles,” Echaore says. “So for pickled onions, if I find a brewery that does a good gose [a malted wheat beer from Goslar, Germany] with raspberry or a tart berry, then I’ll use that instead of vinegar,” says Castillo. “It also adds color. I like using IPA for pickles, too.”
The creative pairings were easy to advertise on social media, and Heritage Barbecue quickly grew a cult following. Says Castillo: “We started noticing more people were getting involved in it but the one advantage we had was our creativity.” The cooking experience set them apart. “So, Nick and I thought what can we do to change this up and to be different? We tried to use more seasonal produce. We started buying things local, started purchasing things locally and made some connections with the Ecology Center.”
These connections made Heritage Barbecue stand out.
***
In March 2020, when everything in the county was closing due to COVID-19, Heritage Barbecue partnered with chefs and purveyors such as OC Baking Company, to feed kitchen and hospitality employees who were suddenly out of work. More than 10,000 pulled-pork sandwiches were given away over the course of two weekends.
The timing was perfect. When everyone felt weighed down, defeated by the restrictions and uncertain about the future, there was a glimmer of hope coming from a small family owned barbecue spot. A community of like-minded food people were gathering in San Juan Capistrano, and it all centered around the Castillos.
In May 2020, Kingsford Charcoal awarded $10,000 to Heritage Barbecue. Then the media attention flooded them with glowing articles by Conde Nast Traveler, Food and Wine magazine, Eater and beyond, which brought nationwide attention and longer lines. It helped keep the momentum going during the pandemic.
***
Now, Heritage Barbecue’s menu continues to attract diners with a variety of specials. From spicy chili lauded by food critics to a brisket loco moco reminiscent of a Hawaiian luau to cheesy queso dotted with jalapeños and brisket banh mi sandwiches (a nod to Brenda’s Westminster roots), the menu is diverse. It reflects the blending of cultures in Southern California. The flavors also showcase the diversity of Heritage Barbecue’s staff.
“We have every background, you name it, in our kitchen,” Brenda says. “They’re so talented and [with] the variety of places that they have worked at, we’re always open for suggestions from them – why not?”
From Texas to the Carolinas, barbecue is a quintessential American comfort food. Yet California was never a part of the conversation. That is, until recently, when Castillo and his friends at Moo’s Craft Barbecue in East L.A., which features a CaliMex-take on smoked meats, were honored as two of the best barbecue spots in America. Food & Wine magazine recognized Castillo’s chef-forward mission.
After talking to Castillo about barbecue, you sense his passion.
“The meat has to rest for at least eight to 10 hours before you slice it,” he insists. “That keeps the juices in. It’s a completely different experience if you don’t let the meat rest. Also, it must be sliced to order. Otherwise, it oxidizes if you let it sit out.”
Two custom-built 1,000-gallon tanker smokers arrived at Heritage Barbecue in May, just before Mother’s Day. “It was built by Harper Barbecue,” says Echaore. “We’ve been waiting on it for a while, but it’s here just in time for summer. We’re smoking sausages, turkeys, chickens, beef ribs and spare ribs, and for the summer we want to fire roast and smoke our vegetables. Our elote is entirely smoked.”
“We’re definitely going to be busy,” adds Castillo, who had one hand-me-down smoker from Craigslist when he started. Now, welders are building his equipment to order. Castillo sometimes can’t believe his luck.
But Brenda knew this day would come. She continues to stay focused. “It’s good crazy, good busy. We’ve been in worse situations for sure and everything is so new. It is a lot, but we’ll get through it. It’s good stress. And I know these days will go by so fast. We’re trying to enjoy the moment while it’s here. Look at the restaurant, the first year is already flying by. We were all so stressed but we’ll look back on this and think, ‘Oh wow, that was easy.’”
Heritage Barbecue, at 31721 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano, marks its first anniversary on Aug. 8. A ticketed event is expected to attract barbecue lovers and pitmasters from all over the country.
—-
BBQ roundup
Looking for other great spots for that barbecue taste around Southern California? Try these:
Bludso’s Bar & Que: Many Angelenos have discovered Texas-style barbecue from pitmaster Kevin Bludso. In 1998, when Bludso opened his stand in Compton, he kicked off the Southern California barbecue movement. His food grew so popular that Bludso opened a Hollywood location that continues to draw tourists from around the globe, especially now that the pitmaster is hosting Netflix’s “The American Barbecue Showdown.” While the menu features classics such as brisket, pork ribs and chicken, there are innovative items as well such as Buffalo-style rib tips and smoked jackfruit that are worth a taste. Plus, now that Bludso is on Goldbelly, an online marketplace for artisanal and regional food, Kevin Bludso’s barbecue is available nationwide.
Kuya Lord LA: The La Cañada-Flintridge pop-up concept by former Bestia sous chef Lord Maynard Llera combines Western Texas-style barbecue with flavors of Llera’s hometown, Lucena City in the Philippines. His blue prawns are sautéed in garlic crab paste and served with calamansi-infused fish sauce. Don’t miss the Filipino-inspired version of porchetta. It is a celebration of textures, crispy pork skin and tender meat combined with aromatics. It’s also a special, so you’ll have to keep a lookout on Kuya Lord LA’s Instagram account (@kuyalord_la) for weekly specials and seasonal menu changes.
Moo’s Barbecue: The underground family run barbecue operation attracted long lines to Smorgasbord Los Angeles with their take on CaliMex-style barbecue. Now, fans of Moo’s Barbecue, including Heritage Barbecue owners Brenda and Daniel Castillo, are excited to hear about the reopening of the Smorgasbord after a 15-month hiatus. For a while, Moo’s was available via limited pickup in East L.A. But the couple is still raising funding for a brick-and-mortar location. Even without a permanent spot, Moo’s garnered national attention. The Robb Report, Food and Wine magazine and other food writers continue to praise Moo’s Barbecue for its innovative Southern California flair.
Kra-Z Kai’s Laotian Barbecue: Musky Bilavarn boasts that Kra-Z Kai is the only Laotian-style barbecue restaurant on the West Coast. But, if you ask Bilavarn, his style isn’t purely Laotian. “It all started when I tried to produce a sauce line,” he says. The only problem was no one knew how to properly use it. So Bilavarn began cooking demos with his marinade sauce for friends. “They finally started saying, ‘You should just cook this for us. It’s always so much better when you do it.’” The grilled beef short ribs served at Kra-Z Kai explode with essences of lemongrass. The beef dip dish is served with a pungent chili fish sauce and cilantro. If this is your first time, try Kra Z Kai’s sticky rice, a Laotian staple. “We eat it with everything,” insists Bilavan. 1218 Magnolia Ave., Suite 110, Corona |Rodeo 39 Public Market, 12885 Beach Blvd., Stanton
Korean kick
Just when you think you’ve discovered all the best KBBQ spots, you discover there’s always more to taste. Here’s a short list to try:
Chosun Galbee in Koreatown is a longstanding favorite choice for quality meats. If this is your first time, sample the house-selected meats by ordering the prime combo with short rib, rib eye, bulgogi and brisket.
If you’re seeking a more elevated presentation, Ten-Raku features Kobe-style cuts plated in ornate delicate rows that are photogenic even before it hits the grill.
If you love the flavor of Korean barbecue, but hate the smoky-smell that engulfs you as you eat it, then visit Parks BBQ for its “smokeless” experience. The American Wagyu and GGot Sal (called the flower meat because of its delicate marbling) are impressive offerings, and the beef tartare is available for real meat lovers.
For authentic Korean barbecue outside of K-Town, try the longstanding Brothers Korean BBQ, which expanded to Lakewood, or Baekjeong in Irvine. The banchan, or side dishes, at Baekjeong make the meal. From the delicate souffle-style egg soup to the crispy kimchi pancake, it’s become one of the top Korean barbecue spots in the country.
The prime cuts aren’t always the most sought out: Fans of Korean-style offal praise Arisu in Buena Park for its beef tongue, intestine and marinated duck parts; King Chang in Buena Park is known for spicy tripe and intestine hotpot.
