read the reviews

A Fish Tale / by Michael Nagrant, CS magazine

There’s a certain brand of food writers who write a “woe is me” column every few years. It’s usually a checklist about how their work demands preclude them from being Norm- and Cliff-like regulars at the Cheers bar, how too much foie gras has given them a temporary case of gout or forced them to hire a Jillian Michaels-like cyborg to get rid of their jiggly parts. I do not understand them. In fact, I’d like to relieve them of their expense accounts and point them to a job in a basement cubicle... // read more

GT Fish & Oyster, Perennial Virant / by Jeff Ruby, Chicago Magazine

The last time I saw Kevin Boehm and Rob Katz, they were outside Perennial Virant, talking on their cell phones and to each other. At the same time. Their latest restaurants, Perennial Virant and GT Fish & Oyster, which opened in the span of 49 days, would be impressive enough in their own right; hot on the heels of 2010’s Girl & the Goat, they’re particularly ambitious. I would say it’s like the Beatles releasing Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt. Pepper within 18 months, but Boehm and Katz are not the Fab Four in this scenario. They’re George Martin — visionary producers who recognize talent and then provide a framework to capture and nurture it // read more

No need to fish for compliments / by Phil Vettel, chicago tribune

Eventually, the restaurant team of Kevin Boehm and Rob Katz will open a restaurant that fails to live up to expectations. Mostly because expectations for this everything-touched-turns-golden duo keep rising. How can they not? From Boka to Girl & the Goat to Perennial (re-christened Perennial Virant, and I suppose — sigh — that will be terrific as well), these guys have been on a roll. Make that a lobster roll, now that GT Fish & Oyster (which takes its name from chef Giuseppe Tentori) is playing to capacity crowds // read more

The Boka group scores again with GT Fish & Oyster / by Mike Sula, reader

One late night last week the fat togarashi-vinegar-and-malt-powder-dusted steak fries that accompanied an order of battered cod fingers at GT Fish & Oyster came to the table in a cone tightly folded from page 22 of the April 14 Reader, which happened to recommend 15 of our favorite seafood spots // read more

review: GT Fish & Oyster / by David Tamarkin, Time Out Chicago

...I loved the cocktails, which was no surprise given these expert Dark & Stormys were designed by Benjamin Schiller. And I loved the room, which ever since the Boka Group (those guys behind Girl & the Goat and Perennial, among others) announced would become GT Fish I’ve mistakenly referred to, in conversation and in print, as a “fish shack.” Clearly, I did not know of what I spoke. Fish Bar in Lincoln Park — that’s a fish shack. GT Fish is a restaurant. And in contrast to Fish Bar, here the nautical details lend the room a sleekness. The aura is cool, salty. Not unlike the wind in Cape Cod // read more

Three Restaurants Chicagoans Clamor For / by Nick Kindelsperger, New York Magazine

Part of the same restaurant group as Girl & the Goat, Giuseppe Tentori’s new venture serves inventive seafood at shockingly affordable prices — and stays open past midnight. Though it’s been packed since opening in March, you can still generally snag same-day off-peak reservations. // read more