Boka owners Kevin Boehm and Rob Katz founded BRG Catering.
Photo: Liza L. Moraitis for BizBash
Toast of the Town: In 2003, former nightclub owner Rob Katz partnered with Kevin Boehm, a new-to-Chicago restaurateur. Combining their sensibilities (and the first two letters of their last names), they opened Lincoln Park restaurant Boka, featuring a loungelike setting and progressive American fare.
With the success of Boka and Landmark, the contemporary American restaurant it opened in 2005, the team was flooded with catering requests, but getting a license didn’t become top priority until this year, with the opening of Perennial, the duo’s third Lincoln Park restaurant. Perennial is on the ground floor of the new—and event-friendly—Park View Hotel and across the street from event space A New Leaf. “We knew there would be a lot of catered parties going on,” Katz says. Not wanting to miss out on such an abundance of opportunities, Boehm and Katz finally launched a full-service catering firm, BRG Catering, in January.Made to Order: The chef behind BRG is the Charlie Trotter-trained Giuseppe Tentori, whose work at Boka earned three stars from The Chicago Tribune and put him on this year’s Food & Wine Best New Chefs list. Tentori creates menus for events ranging from small in-home dinner parties to corporate events for 1,000. In interviews, he describes his progressive, Mediterranean-influenced fare as “clean and simple,” but Tribune food critic Phil Vettel qualified the chef’s humility: “When your previous job was chef de cuisine at Charlie Trotter’s and your next-door neighbor is Alinea, your food probably does seem simple,” he wrote. “By any normal measure, however, it is dazzling.” A sampling of Tentori’s past canapés includes smoked-salmon rolls with Granny Smith apples, white polenta with ash-baked eggplant, and braised Kobe short ribs with homemade grainy mustard. But his food is not all high-end—Tentori has also prepared hot dogs to give guests an old-fashioned taste of Chicago.
At Your Service: Brad Habansky, who hired BRG to cater the opening of his Lincoln Park shop-salon Guise/Chic, says the company is now his go-to firm. Habansky says that even though BRG’s food lives up to its three-star lineage, the owners aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. “Rob and Kevin bring a higher level of professionalism,” he says. “At my event, they were behind the bar with their sleeves rolled up. They were taking out the trash.” Boehm has his own take on the team’s offerings: “We know that it’s not only about good food and good service. Especially at business events, it’s about putting on a show. When these companies are entertaining clients or trying to keep their own employees around, it’s show business. And we get that.”
With the success of Boka and Landmark, the contemporary American restaurant it opened in 2005, the team was flooded with catering requests, but getting a license didn’t become top priority until this year, with the opening of Perennial, the duo’s third Lincoln Park restaurant. Perennial is on the ground floor of the new—and event-friendly—Park View Hotel and across the street from event space A New Leaf. “We knew there would be a lot of catered parties going on,” Katz says. Not wanting to miss out on such an abundance of opportunities, Boehm and Katz finally launched a full-service catering firm, BRG Catering, in January.Made to Order: The chef behind BRG is the Charlie Trotter-trained Giuseppe Tentori, whose work at Boka earned three stars from The Chicago Tribune and put him on this year’s Food & Wine Best New Chefs list. Tentori creates menus for events ranging from small in-home dinner parties to corporate events for 1,000. In interviews, he describes his progressive, Mediterranean-influenced fare as “clean and simple,” but Tribune food critic Phil Vettel qualified the chef’s humility: “When your previous job was chef de cuisine at Charlie Trotter’s and your next-door neighbor is Alinea, your food probably does seem simple,” he wrote. “By any normal measure, however, it is dazzling.” A sampling of Tentori’s past canapés includes smoked-salmon rolls with Granny Smith apples, white polenta with ash-baked eggplant, and braised Kobe short ribs with homemade grainy mustard. But his food is not all high-end—Tentori has also prepared hot dogs to give guests an old-fashioned taste of Chicago.
At Your Service: Brad Habansky, who hired BRG to cater the opening of his Lincoln Park shop-salon Guise/Chic, says the company is now his go-to firm. Habansky says that even though BRG’s food lives up to its three-star lineage, the owners aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. “Rob and Kevin bring a higher level of professionalism,” he says. “At my event, they were behind the bar with their sleeves rolled up. They were taking out the trash.” Boehm has his own take on the team’s offerings: “We know that it’s not only about good food and good service. Especially at business events, it’s about putting on a show. When these companies are entertaining clients or trying to keep their own employees around, it’s show business. And we get that.”
