It's a rainy, cold Thursday. Inside, amid Georgie's art deco-esque decor, the place feels like Hollywood in the 1930s, and I keep half expecting Cary Grant or Claudette Colbert to waltz in. But right now, Chef RJ Yoakum is talking about something more important: fish and vegetables, underscoring a change in the restaurant's menu and approach.
"It's a lot harder to cook fish and vegetables," he tells me. "It really comes down to how you prepare them." And that, he believes, is where you can see the chef's true skill.
Georgie opened in 2019 under Michelin-starred Chef Curtis Stone, then showcasing a $390 steak that The Dallas Morning News called the most expensive in town. There was a buzz, good reviews and tremendous talent in the kitchen, like Chef Toby Archibald, who went on to found Quarter Acre, which made Local Profile's best of 2023 list. But this year, Chef Stone had parted ways with owner Stephan Courseau.
Enter RJ Yoakum, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America New York, where he also played point guard, with experience in London and Italy, and formerly of the French Laundry, the iconic and innovative Napa restaurant in his native California.
Fittingly, we start with the French onion consommé — a dish that before we arrived came highly recommended by Iris Midler, founder of Chefs For Farmers. Conceptually, it's a playful dish, a homage of sorts to Yoakum's former boss, Chef Thomas Keller of the French Laundry, and in short, a deconstructed, upside-down French onion soup.
"Usually, you eat the cheese first because it's on the top," explains Chef Yoakum. "But I put it on the bottom, so you eat it last." The dish doesn't only work as an intellectual culinary exercise. It's delicious, and perhaps, the best thing I've eaten this year.
The dishes that follow — a one-two punch of grilled Spanish octopus with an unorthodox, yet delicious brown butter and pumpkin paired with mole, and bluefin tuna tataki with applewood smoke — highlight Georgie's new focus on a menu that moves confidently beyond steak. If you want top-grade wagyu, they've still got it. And it will be incredible. But if you want something that reflects the restaurant's new direction, well, you're in for a treat.
"I don't like churros," says Chef as he brings out potato churros with caramelized onion dip and a Baerii caviar bump. "So I make them into something I do like." For Yoakum, the best way to eat caviar is with potato chips — something about which he would often have playful arguments with his grandma.
I start to notice a theme. His take on fish and chips, for example, is inspired by the fish and chips he ate after an 18-hour workday at The Clove Club in London. That's when the throughline hits me: Chef Yoakum is making highly personal dishes, taking things that he might not even like or recall a tough time, and turning them into something delicious. I tell him, to which he replies, "I try to make things I don't like into things I do like."
The mains that follow — pink snapper (espelette and Meyer lemon panade, preserved pepper and arugula pesto), dry-aged duck breast (smoked wildflower honey, mushroom tapenade, foie gras jus) and agnolotti (Meyer lemon ricotta, parmesan, toasted hazelnuts and brown butter) — show a reborn Georgie. It's not only the mains that are great, but the sides, too (the sweet potato purée is a showstopper). In an industry that can sometimes feel complacent, this is a restaurant that isn't. And not only on the menu.
"Before this, I was never a head chef, and I always was the sous chef or the guy behind the scenes," says Chef Yoakum. Georgie owner Stephan Courseau took a chance, and now, the kitchen is Yoakum's. "When I started, I told them it was gonna be very hard, and to be good, it takes sacrifice," he says. "Every day, I think about how things can be better, and how I can be better."
The meal is drawing to a close, capped off with a divine mont blanc dessert. The name might be the same, but this is a different Georgie. "Before Georgie was known as a steakhouse," I say. "What kind of restaurant is it now?" Not missing a beat, Chef Yoakum says, "A really good one."
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