Former ‘Top Chef’ Contestant on His Rise from Dishwasher to Michelin-Star Honors

This story was reported for K Onda KQED, a monthly newsletter focused on the Bay Area’s Latinx community. Click here to subscribe.

Chef Rogelio Garcia has wasted no time living out his culinary dreams. After taking an after-school job as a dishwasher at 15, he dedicated himself to rising up the ranks in fine dining.

In his early 20s, he was named executive chef of well-known restaurants, including Angele in Napa, as well as the Commissary and Spruce, both in San Francisco. In 2018, he was a contestant on Bravo’s Top Chef.

In 2022, he took on the challenge of developing and opening Auro, a restaurant in the Four Seasons Resort in Calistoga that earned a Michelin star in its first year, a major accomplishment for any chef.

In September, he released a cookbook, Convivir: Modern Mexican Cooking in California’s Wine Country. All the while, he’s raised two sons who are now 18 and 19.

“When I got into this industry, I just needed a job to help my mother,” Garcia, 38, said. “It became such an amazing career.”

Garcia is a different kind of dreamer. He is one of more than half a million people who participate in Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program commonly known as DACA, which was enacted in 2012 to protect immigrants from deportation if they came to the United States as children.

Former President Donald Trump tried to end the program during his first term as president. He has  promised to deport millions of undocumented immigrants in his second term, which starts in January.

I sat down with Garcia two days after Trump won the 2024 presidential election. The possibility of DACA ending keeps him up at night. His hope would be to obtain citizenship one day, but right now he doesn’t have a clear path for that.

“A good friend of mine told me, ‘You can’t waste energy on something you can’t control, because what’s going to happen is going to happen,’” he recalled. “If it was up to me, things would be different, right? But that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to work hard and pursue my dreams and continue to inspire.”

Garcia walked me through the dining room at Auro, with its floor-to-ceiling windows framing a stunning view of the Napa Valley. Diners enjoy dishes influenced by Mexican, French and Japanese cuisine. He told me about some of the items he was serving that night on the tasting menu: canapes, king crab from Japan, an al pastor-inspired pineapple sauce and buñuelos for dessert.

Living with uncertainty has been a constant for Garcia. He and his two siblings were raised by a single mother who brought him to Los Angeles when he was 2 years old.

“I don’t know how she did it,” Garcia said of his mother, who navigated a new country, an unfamiliar language and tight finances. “When the holidays were coming up or my birthday or one of my siblings’ birthdays, she would definitely make an effort to make us feel special, whether it’d be cooking chiles rellenos or making flan.

“I knew when she was about to make dessert, it was because it was a special day.”

When he was teenager, the family moved to the Napa Valley to be near relatives. During his time at Vintage High School in Napa, Garcia took drama classes and dreamt of becoming an actor until he learned how hard it would be to make it in Hollywood.

What drew him to acting was the chance to express himself as an artist. Food, he decided, could also be an avenue for that.

“Whatever I had inside that I wanted to come out, it was going to come out in one form or the other,” he said.

He considered going to culinary school, but he couldn’t afford it nor could he apply for financial aid because he was undocumented.

“I had more time than money, so I would come in early to learn from the chef or the guy that I was working for to show me how to break down fish, show me how to do X, Y and Z,” he said of his jobs in restaurants. “I was always asking, ‘What book should I buy? What things should I watch on YouTube?’”

In 2012, President Obama announced DACA. Garcia began his application right away. He hired a lawyer and spent several weeks pulling together school records, his birth certificate and documents proving he had arrived in the U.S. before his 16th birthday — and that he’d lived here continuously.

“I felt like I won the lottery,” he said when his application was approved. “It was just incredible. I don’t have to worry about driving. I can work in places that, even if they check, it is fine because it’s all valid. So that was a huge relief for me.”

In 2013, he landed the executive chef role at Angele. He went on to other fine dining establishments, where worked with accomplished chefs and restaurateurs such as Traci des Jardins, Douglas Keane and Michael Mina.

As he built up his resume, his dream of winning a Michelin Star, one of the most prestigious awards in the culinary world, lingered. He knew that Auro would give him a chance.

“My personal goal was to come to this restaurant and get a Michelin star,” he said. “That’s like the ultimate prize for a chef, but I didn’t plan on doing a book and opening a restaurant at the same time.”

Auro was added to the Michelin Guide in 2023, and Garcia was invited to the awards ceremony for California restaurants. Then came an invite to the after party. None of that guarantees a star.

“I remember the moment when they called my name and the restaurant’s name — I just couldn’t believe it,” he said.

Within minutes, he received so many congratulatory texts and messages that his phone froze. He relished every second. Another dream had come true.

That has made sharing his story all the more important. His goal with the cookbook was to demonstrate what he’s accomplished in spite of not having legal status in this country.

It’s also a “love letter” to his mother, California and Mexico — his biggest culinary influences. The irony is that he can’t visit Mexico without risking not being able to return to the United States.

“It’s like, ‘I love you from afar. I can’t wait to truly meet you and meet the people and hold you. I hold you in my heart. But I can’t be there to hold you in person,’” said Garcia, who makes it a point of speaking about his experiences at local schools. “The most important thing for me is to give back to inspire the younger generation, to young kids who are maybe lost like I was, maybe confused, maybe not guided.”