Chef Biography
Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1963, Joe Castro was raised by a Kentucky mother who loved to bake country hams, and a Filipino father, also a doctor, who enjoyed fixing fish heads and feeding them to him at midnight. Both his brother and brother-in-law are chefs, and his wife is a pastry chef.
Following school, Chef Castro interned at the Lai Lai Sheraton Hotel in Taipei, Taiwan and the CTIC Chinatrust Hotel in Kaohsuing, Taiwan. He then worked his way up in the kitchen of the Embassy Row Hotel in Washington, DC for five years.
In 1992, Dieter Kindermann, Vice President of Operations for the Camberley Hotel Group, who owned the Brown Hotel, brought Chef Castro back home to run the English Grill. Four years later, in 1996, the Great Chefs television crew converged on the hotel to tape Chef Castro for the Discovery Channel’s Great Chefs of the South and Great Chefs of America television series.
In 2007, Chef Castro was enticed to move across town in Louisville to become the Culinary Training Manager for General Electric’s Monogram Appliances, where he remains today in 2016.
Recipes
Roulade of Salmon with Egg and Capers
Serving: 4 Print Roulade of Salmon with Egg and Capers By Great Chefs November 9, 2015 To make the salmon roulade the chef uses nori—paper-thin sheets of dried seaweed. Nori can range in color from dark green to dark purple to black, and has a sweet ocean taste. It is commonly used for wrapping sushi […]
Roasted Loin of Lamb with Country Ham and Hominy Grits
Serving: 4 Print Roasted Loin of Lamb with Country Ham and Hominy Grits By Great Chefs October 4, 2015 Chef Castro takes his regional ingredients seriously, making an elegant but mouth-watering entree from down-to-earth local grits and ham. The country ham is a southern specialty: dry-cured then slowly smoked and aged for six to 12 […]