2017 Cotes du Coeur Catalog with tabs

Stephen Rogers
Gemma
community he left.
Gemma represents a coming home of sorts.
Its Executive Chef and Co-Owner, Stephen
Rogers, grew up here in Dallas. He moved
back with his wife, Allison Yoder (who runs
the front of the house and bar program)
and their twin boys to settle back into the
Rogers never planned to be a chef, but after San Francisco’s
renowned restaurant critic Michael Bauer praised his cuisine at
the Napa Valley restaurant, PRESS, where he was filling in until a
permanent chef could be hired, he stayed in the kitchen. “At that
point, I realized I wasn’t going anywhere,” Rogers says. When he
graduated from Highland Park High School in 1988, Rogers’ sights
were set on being a professional musician. He had been playing
piano since he was five, which was also about the time he started to
cook breakfast for himself (he usually woke up before his two older
brothers and younger sister). His plan: to major in organ and minor
in piano, and eventually get a teaching job at a college.
Between classes and performances, Rogers always worked in
restaurants. “The cash was good, I loved being around food, and
I enjoyed the buzz of working at night,” he says. After graduation,
he moved to Philadelphia where a church organist job was waiting
for him, as well as his future wife, Allison Yoder. After that, he got a
contract with the Virginia Opera’s apprentice program, and when
it ended, he moved to New York to pursue his dream of being
a professional musician. By now he had been in New York for 10
years and was ready for something different. So and he and Yoder
moved to Miami, now with a new goal: to open their own restaurant
one day.
When Yoder took a job at PRESS in Napa Valley, he went with her,
but never pursued his line cook dreams. He didn’t have to. When
PRESS needed help in the kitchen, Rogers tied on an apron. After
a spectacular seven-year run at PRESS, Rogers and Yoder realized
it was to time to open their own place – back in Dallas, where he
still has family and where he began cooking with his grandmother,
shelling black-eyed peas and pecans from their trees out back while
she stirred up a batch of cornbread.
“It feels good to be home,” he says.
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