JONATHAN BENNO: I'm not accustomed to--
I've always done these kinds of interviews or cooking
segments, they're always very brief.
Like when we made the pasta.
It's demo a couple of dishes and it's over.
Tell me about your career and it's over.
But last night was a little challenging for me at points.
Because we were together for four or five hours.
And four or five hours together with the camera and
you and questions.
You need to keep things going.
And you need to keep asking questions.
And you just keep shooting-- what did you say, 12 minutes--
that is fun and hit all the bases.
Honestly, for me, I wasn't embarrassed
to be with the entourage.
But I felt to stay--
it was a little bit challenging.
Mm!
It's a casonsei that has a sweet potato as the filling,
toasted almonds, just a little bit of sherry vinegar.
And then this one we finish with mozzarella
that we smoke in-house.
My name is Jonathan Benno and I'm the chef at Lincoln
Ristorante.
Lincoln Ristorante is on 65th street, between Amsterdam and
Broadway, right in the Lincoln Center.
With everything that happens up here, there are all the
performing arts houses, it's a pretty
inspirational place to work.
There's been a lot of allusions to being on stage
when you're working on the line at Lincoln.
The kitchen is completely open.
The food is a modern interpretation of a classic
Italian cuisine.
It doesn't have a regional focus.
The pasta dishes here are very, very popular.
Where's the strozz?
-Strozz is behind here.
JONATHAN BENNO: This is a strozzapreti.
So it's another pasta that we make in-house.
It has a little bit of squid ink in it.
That's what gives it the color.
This is probably one of the few--
what we'll call signature pastas at the restaurant.
Strozzapreti means priest strangler.
Strozza, preti, priest.
I never worked in Italy.
I've been lucky enough to travel there.
I'd say, I had a good foundation in pasta making
over the course of the past couple years.
I grew up in Connecticut.
I start washing dishes when I was 15.
I moved out to Hawaii.
I worked out there for a while.
I came back to New York.
I went to the Culinary Institute of America.
I went back out West.
I was lucky enough to work in Napa with Thomas Keller the
first year the French Laundry was open.
I came to New York for about eight years, and worked for
Daniel Boulud.
I was working at Craft with Marco Canora and Tom Colicchio
when the opportunity came up to open Per Se.
I was at Per Se for six years.
I started thinking about what was next.
I knew that I wanted to do
something completely different.
I've always been passionate about Italian food.
And I've always loved going to Italy, and learning about the
culture and the cuisine.
I've tried to take everything that I've learned up until
this point, and and apply it here.
Here we are now, two years later, with a restaurant that
has a firm identity and a strong following.
The restaurant knows who it is and what it is and what it
wants to be for, what you can imagine, is a
very diverse clientele.
You told me to pick a restaurant that I really
wanted to go eat at.
I've been dying to go to Nick Kim's restaurant, Neta, in the
West Village.
I know Nick probably for eight years now, since he opened
Masa and we opened Per Se.
The two guys that joined me for dinner--
Chung Chow and Dominick Tesoriero.
Chung, I met out in California, when he was a cook
at Bouchon and I went back out to work at the French Laundry,
and then was one of the opening sous chefs here.
Dominick is a real character.
DOMINICK TESORIERO: I'm still a [INAUDIBLE].
JONATHAN BENNO: He was probably with us for about six
months, and comes back often, and helps us with off-site
events, and things.
Chung is from Hawaii.
And I think we share certainly a passion for fish and sushi.
NICK KIM: Neta, for us, means fresh ingredients, what's
available now versus when it's not in season.
So we're very seasonal driven.
Simple, honest.
And right now what Jimmy is doing is breaking down the
collar piece.
A lot of the restaurants will basically just cut right
through it.
But we take the time to remove each layer.
And what we do with the sinew is we'll marinate it.
And then we'll grill it.
And we'll make sinew sushi.
-Here we have beautiful, fresh dungeness crab salad with some
cucumber, wild parsley, and a dashi vinaigrette.
JONATHAN BENNO: One of the really beautiful things about
eating like that is it always leaves you wanting more.
That two to three bites, and you wish there
was a fourth bite.
But by the time you realize that there's no fourth bite,
the next course is already coming to the table.
It's almost the kind of meal, and the kind of experience,
where you really want to be quiet.
And you really want to think about what you're eating.
And I think you pick up on that pretty quickly.
NICK KIM: We cook things very lightly, so when you taste
things it's very gentle.
Like this scallop dish, for example.
Scallop's warm, foie gras is hot.
And the uni is room temperature-ish.
Our soy sauce that we age in a bourbon cask.
JONATHAN BENNO: If you had said to me warm foie gras, sea
urchin, scallop, I wouldn't connect those dots myself.
But the way that he did it--
definitely one of the best things that I'd ever had.
Although I was full--
not like overstuffed but perfect at
the end of the meal--
it was one of those meals that I didn't want it to end.
I remember the first time I ate at the French Laundry,
feeling the same way.
Thank you very much.
What Nick and his team are doing there, they really stand
out in my mind as one of the best meals that I've ever had.
After that we went to probably one of my
favorite bars in the city--
Peter McManus Cafe.
My wife is a chef as well.
That was always kind of our rendezvous point.
We would meet there, and have a beer together.
INTERVIEWER: Would you say it's a hard thing to bring a
camera to your favorite bar?
JONATHAN BENNO: That was kind of a funny location.
People want to see what's going on, and who is that.
Why is there a camera?
I've lived in that neighborhood for a long time,
and I know those guys very, very well.
For me to be out at McManus at midnight was surreal, almost.
My wife and I moved up to Westchester recently.
We have two little girls.
I started bobbing a little bit towards the end, because for
me to be out--
it's just funny.
I guess I'm getting older.
The dish I chose to make for the real munchie--
I love sandwiches.
I'm crazy about sandwiches.
I always have been.
I also love to work with tripe.
So what we did was we took the honeycomb tripe and braised it
whole, until it was tender.
And then cut it into cutlet-size pieces, breaded
it, and fried it.
So it was a tripe cutlet on our country bread with lemon
aoli, B&G hot peppers, pickled red onions, and arugula.
DOMINICK TESORIERO: Amazing.
Sometimes, life is really grand--
just sometimes.
JONATHAN BENNO: Cheers.
DOMINICK TESORIERO: Chung.
CHUNG CHOW: Cheers it up.
JONATHAN BENNO: You drove, right?
DOMINICK TESORIERO: I did.
CHUNG CHOW: This is so good.