Jonathan Benno

Coming Up

Training at the Culinary Institute of America gave Jonathan Benno the baseline many fine-dining kitchens demand: technique first, repetition, and the ability to work inside a strict standard. That preparation carried into the New York rooms that followed, beginning with his time as Head Chef at Per Se in New York City, New York, where the pace and scrutiny matched the room’s profile. He later served as chef at Lincoln Ristorante in New York City, New York until 2017, continuing to build a record defined by control, consistency, and the demands of ambitious service. Since 2018, Benno has been chef of Benno (Evelyn Hotel), a role that gathers that earlier experience into one address. The position reads less as a break from the past than as a place where long practice in New York kitchens can be put to work with focus.

Where They Are Now

At Four Twenty Five in New York City, Benno serves as culinary director, a title that points to oversight across more than one plate or station. The job asks for a wider view of the dining room: how a kitchen is organized, how service is shaped, and how the whole operation holds together. He also served as executive chef of three concepts within the Evelyn Hotel in New York City in 2018, which shows the scale of responsibility attached to that property. The work sits across multiple concepts, but the throughline remains the same: one chef holding several moving parts in balance. His own description lands on accumulation rather than reinvention: “It affords me the opportunity to take everything I’ve done throughout my career and showcase it all in one place.” For a chef shaped by some of New York’s most watched kitchens, the line fits a practice built from repetition, range, and a steady read on what a room requires.

In Their Words “It affords me the opportunity to take everything I’ve done throughout my career and showcase it all in one place.”