GT Prime

GT Prime arrived in Chicago's River North at a moment when the American steakhouse format was overdue for reconsideration, and it delivered that reconsideration with precision rather than provocation. Executive Chef and Partner Giuseppe Tentori, whose parallel project GT Fish & Oyster had already established his appetite for ingredient-led cooking, applied the same discipline to a meat-centric menu that treated the steakhouse not as a genre to be celebrated uncritically but as a starting point for something more considered. The menu reflected that position concretely. Wagyu strip and grass-fed bison appeared in four-ounce portions designed for sharing rather than spectacle, placed alongside starters including hand-cut beef tartare, bone marrow mousse, tuna crudo, and roasted scallop. Pasta held its own as a serious course: bigoli with a beef-pork-veal Bolognese and a risotto that critics singled out for texture and restraint. The kitchen's range across proteins, seafood, and composed vegetable work gave the room the profile of a fine-dining restaurant that happened to anchor itself in meat, rather than a steakhouse that had added a few garnishes. The room at 707 North Wells reinforced the culinary intent. The aesthetic was contemporary and spare, polished without the dark-wood conventions that define most steakhouses in the city, and intimate without leaning into theatre. Critics noted the space felt deliberate in exactly the way the cooking did, which is a harder balance to achieve than it sounds in a neighbourhood as saturated with dining options as River North. GT Prime closed in 2020. Its significance to Chicago's steakhouse conversation was that it demonstrated, over its operating years, that the format could absorb fine-dining rigour without losing the directness that draws people to steak in the first place. Tentori's approach at this address proved that argument convincingly enough that the restaurant's closure registered as a genuine loss in the city's dining scene.