Traditionally, the classic American steak house has been the restaurant of American individualism, or perhaps selfishness. You may share that shrimp cocktail appetizer, or the side of creamed spinach, with your boys in flannel suits, but when it comes down to the main attraction, what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours. Keep your paws off my T-bone, dog, or I’ll go for your throat.
It starts with the name, GT Prime, the initials standing for Giuseppe Tentori, the longtime Boka Group chef and Trotter’s vet who opened the estimable GT Fish & Oyster in 2011. In some ways this River North steak house—in the midst of the city’s steak-house district—is built on GT Fish’s shared-plates model, right down to the beef.
There are more conventionally plated dishes that are just as enjoyable. Lemony, creamy grits are tasty enough to make you push aside the otherwise delicious veal cheek they support. Nutty roasted cauliflower is adorned with a jumble of pine nuts, sweet fried peppers, tomato, and whipped ricotta. And a skillet of tangy, cheesy corn playing second act to blistered shishitos livens up what’s become one of the most overplayed vegetables in town. Paired with crispy, fatty suckling pig belly, sweet pureed red cabbage and roasted squash make a plate that’s the picture of autumn.
707 N. Wells 312-600-6305gtprimerestaurant.com
