Photography by Anthony Tahler and courtesy of Boka Restaurant Group
With more than 20 restaurants to his name, Kevin Boehm’s lifelong dream to become a restaurateur took him on a rather unexpected journey. After dropping out of the University of Illinois, he left his hometown in Springfield, Illinois for Panama City, Florida, where he honed his skills. Now, Boehm and partner Rob Katz run the successful Boka Restaurant Group, which is behind some of the most highly regarded restaurants in Chicago—the Girl and the Goat, Momotaro, and Swift & Son’s, to name a few—and is finally expanding outside the Windy City with a Girl and the Goat in Los Angeles. Here, Boehm reflects on his career trajectory and the power of good hospitality.
On dropping out of college to become a restaurateur
I packed up my Suzuki Samurai, and I stopped in Panama City. It was the winter, and the restaurants weren’t hiring. One day, I wrote a fake résumé and listed all these restaurants that had gone out of business so they couldn’t call for a reference. I walked into the most fine-dining restaurant in the city, and the general manager Mike asked ‘What’s your favorite grape varietal?’ I had no idea what he meant. Alice, who owned the restaurant, was walking by and she grabbed me by the cheek and she goes, ‘I like this one, Mike, hire this one.’ And I became a captain at this restaurant with no experience. I immediately bought a bottle of wine and a wine knife and learned how to open it. I faked it until I made it.
On starting Boka Restaurant Group
I met Rob Katz [through a mutual friend]. He had four successful nightclubs in Chicago. I was looking to get into Chicago, and he was looking to go into restaurants. We were slated to have a 15-minute cup of coffee, and we sat there for four hours. At the end of those four hours, we thought, ‘What’s the worst that could happen? Let’s open up one restaurant.’ And that restaurant was Boka. Rob and I are close friends; we’re like family. We’ve had three fights in 17 years. One of them was over fantasy football, one of them was over a game of darts, and one of them was restaurant related. Our rule is nobody digs their heels in. If you feel passionate about something, you state your case, and if you’re more passionate than the other one, then the other person lets you have it.
On his best hospitality experience
In 1997, I was thinking about opening a second restaurant in St. Louis. I drove there with a chef friend of mine, and we pulled over in Carlinville, Illinois to have a quick lunch at Wendy’s. There was a woman who was perched at the front just to greet us. She was the maître d’ at Wendy’s. They had just come out with Dave’s Spicy Chicken sandwich, and the server went into this long speech like he was working at a Michelin 3-starred restaurant. The greeter was keeping the SuperBar buffet immaculate. At one point, she came by and refilled our waters with a pitcher. I looked at my friend and I go, ‘What in the hell is going on?’ He said: ‘I don’t know but this is the most spectacular fast food restaurant in the entire world.’ We got into a discussion about how great this manager must be. He’s been given the same grid, the same floorplan, the same menu, and he figured out how to do something unique with it. We asked if we could see him, and I said, ‘This is an incredibly well-run restaurant, and you should be proud of it.’ He said, ‘As you can see, we are,’ and pointed to the wall. Wendy’s gives [awards] to the highest-rated Wendy’s in the company, and they won it. We walked to the parking lot and in the spot closest to the restaurant was a Camaro and the license plate said Wendy’s 25. It must have been the manager’s car. He was so into it, so committed.
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