Less than two years ago, RJ Smith was cooking elaborate tasting menus for four people in his Drexel University dorm room. Now, the 21-year-old chef is about to step onto a far bigger stage: a 120-seat ...

RJ Yoakum is nominated for a James Beard Best Emerging Chef Award but he’s already executive chef at Georgie’s in Dallas, and he’s only 31 years old. On one hand, RJ Yoakum is a semi-finalist for Best ...

RJ Yoakum, one of Dallas' few remaining nominees for a James Beard Award, is no longer the executive chef at Dallas fine-dining restaurant Georgie. Restaurant owner Stephan Courseau confirmed Yoakum's ...

Ah, the cooking life: Chef RJ Cooper will tell you that, for “just a kid from Detroit” it’s been a heckuva journey. His career has taken him from Anchorage Alaska to New York City. In 2004, he landed ...

When Team Dallas signed chef RJ Yoakum as the executive sous chef at Georgie in 2023, it was one for the win column. Yoakum’s previous work includes the French Laundry (three Michelin stars, the ...

It is a story we’ve heard many times before. Cooking and leading are different skills, and being good at one doesn’t automatically make you good at the other. For nearly a decade, the restaurant ...

In this series, we chat with Dallas chefs about trends, kitchen disasters, overhyped ingredients and favorite restaurants. RJ Yoakum started his career on the West Coast at The French Laundry and ...

A local chef whose last tenure at a high-profile Dallas restaurant included both high acclaim and a mysterious departure is back in the kitchen: Chef RJ Yoakum has been named chef de cuisine of ...