For someone wildly famous for their mean mug, Danny Trejo comes off as one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. The Hollywood legend has been playing the bad guy on-screen for decades, while being an extremely good guy IRL. When he stays at hotels, Trejo takes the toiletries home with him to donate to women’s shelters and rehabs. At one such rehab, Trejo met a teenager with a passion for singing that led him to start a music label, DT Music. “I love being around people who love just what they’re doing,” Machete told us. “That’s why I love to do low-budget, independent movies because they are labors of love. You don’t got eighty million dollars to do a film. You’re borrowing money from your mom. You got grandma’s social security in it.”
When producer Ash Shah came to Trejo with a business plan for a restaurant, Trejo was down. “My mom, all the time she was an unbelievable cook,” Trejo says. “She was a master at it. We always joked about owning a restaurant.” And so, Trejo’s Tacos was born, followed by Trejo’s Cantina, and, most recently, Trejo’s Coffee & Donuts, a donut spot managing to crush it in a town of fierce donut competition. Now when he’s not cruising down Van Nuys Boulevard in his '65 Buick Riviera, he’s balancing his burgeoning restaurant empire, his acting career, and newfound music mogul status. We caught up with the LA native and his handlebar mustache to talk food, cars, and Clint Eastwood.
GQ: How did you get into the donut game?
Danny Trejo: Because I love the police! [laughs, hard] There was this place in Hollywood called Donut Time. It was in a movie called “Tangerine” but It was really a kind of seedy place. People when they hit the bottom in Hollywood would end up at Donut Time. When the building came up [for sale], my business partner said hey, let’s see what we could do with this. They refurbished the building and painted it bright pink. It really brightened up the neighborhood. Now it’s become a tourist attraction.
People come and buy three dozen, four dozen, five dozen boxes of donuts and take them back to their studios or wherever they’re working. We’ve got some really unique donuts. A nacho donut or a tequila donut. My favorite donut of all time, this is world famous right, they have a pineapple fritter donut that literally explodes in your mouth. It’s unbelievable. The problem is once you eat two, from then on you’re begging for money to go buy another one. I’m an addict.
If you could have a donut with anyone on earth, who would you share a donut with?
I think if I could I would share a donut with Clint Eastwood. That’s kind of weird, huh? I met Clint Eastwood when I was thirteen from a time he came over to my dad’s house. My dad was a construction worker and he worked in a building that Clint Eastwood lived in when they were doing Rawhide. My dad built a bar in our house and invited him over. Him and some of the cast from Rawhide came over. I remember looking at Clint Eastwood when I was thirteen years old and thinking this guy’s going to be the president. He was like twenty two years old or something, he just had this unbelievable aura around him that I’ve never forgotten.
So do you start your day with donuts? What’s your morning routine?
First of all, I’ve got four dogs and I’m a bachelor so basically they’ll jump on my bed then I take them outside. We run around the backyard and then I get up and do business. First I check the calendar and see what I got. Today I don’t have to go to work until five. We’re doing an interview at the donut shop.
There’s always something to do. If I by chance have a day off, I’ll go get one of the vintage cars—I love vintage cars—and I’ll drive it, make sure it’s ok, take it over to Chubby’s Automotive in Sylmar and do whatever it’s gotta do.
When you’re on set, what’s breakfast like?
I’ll get a couple of eggs and like a hamburger patty, some kind of protein. You know when you hit 73, you kind of have to watch what you eat. You want to know what my favorite, favorite first thing in the morning is some Greek yogurt with grain-free granola. It’s really good. My son had turned me on to this Kitchfix real good granola, vanilla berry.
What are some of your favorite LA restaurants?
I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I started out in Echo Park, I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. I was in LA when they had streetcars. I live about three miles from where I grew up.
One of my favorite restaurants in the world is a place called Musso & Frank. It’s old school, it’s right on Hollywood Boulevard and Cherokee. I know everybody by name. You go there to dine. Now where I go to eat is a place called The Pantry at 9th and Figueroa. There’s a big difference of where you dine and where you eat. The Pantry you go eat. I’ve got to say that my favorite food is the food that they serve at Trejo’s Cantina.
What should someone get if they’re going for the first time?
Brisket. They do the brisket the way my mom used to do it, they marinate it for a long time. You don’t know whether to eat it or smear it all over your body. Cracks up I shouldn’t have said that, should I?
You’ve been pretty open about your time in prison when you were younger—can you talk to me a little bit about what the food situation was like there?
If you grow up in the prison system like I did, you manipulate ways of getting good food. It doesn’t matter what they’re serving, you can get good food. You get a friend working in the kitchen and he’s sneaking out steak sandwiches.
You got people kind of watching out for you. There are two kinds of people in prison. There’s the predator and the prey. The predator usually gets whatever he wants, and the prey gets it for him.