Seasoned chef Benito Hiss en takes traditional Italian food and adds a dash of 21st century

by Jessica Jones-Gorman Photos by Doug Polle

For Benito Hissen, chef and owner of Ristorante da Benito in Union, a seasoned cook with decades of experience under his apron, all of the basic Italian Parms, sauces, and baked Sunday pastas had become just that…basic. So he took all those traditional recipes, added his own flair and quality ingredients, and made them just a little more 21st century.

“My style of cooking is a very modern Italian cuisine, I like to take a traditional Italian dish and revisit it,” the chef said recently, describing his menu, which is full of updated dishes of veal, free range chicken, and a non-traditional bolognese.

And, instead of a predictable eggplant Parmesan, which Hissen deems “plain, breaded, boring…totally dry and disgusting,” the culinary impresario goes a few steps further.

“I make it special. I grill the eggplant—sliced very thin—then put it into a tureen stuffed with homemade ricotta and Parmesan cheeses, fresh tomatoes and basil. I cover and bake it and then put in two different sauces—one made from San Marzano tomatoes, the other a very fresh pesto. That’s the modern way to revisit that dish. I take the old and make it tastier and more interesting. The prep and the ingredients are different, but nevertheless, we call it eggplant Parmesan because in a way, it is.”

It’s a style of cooking that Hissen is happy to call unique.

“There is nothing served like this in any other restaurant in New Jersey,” he said. “But in my restaurant, you can order something and take to the bank that it is better than anything you have ever tasted.”

Hissen, who grew up in the Bronx and started cooking at the age of seven, has worked in restaurants “all of his life,” and was completely self-taught when he started cooking at Giambelli’s on 50th street in Manhattan in the late 1970s. He opened his own restaurant in 1985, before attending the French Culinary Institute in Soho and the Alma International School of Italian Cuisine in Parma, Italy, to sharpen his skills.

“I started young,” he said. “My mother was a good cook, so I guess you could say I was inspired by her home made food. But everyone’s mama makes the best meatballs and lasagna. In my family, good food was everything; there were so many wonderful dishes. It’s hard to pinpoint just one.”

Hissen built his menu at Da Benito around risotto, pasta, braised meats, and a number of other innovative dishes, all making use of a range of seasonal and local ingredients.

“The idea behind the menu was to simply develop a very broad range of good Italian cooking,” Hissen said. “The dishes are from all regions—north, south, east, and west—and our ingredients come from a variety of different purveyors.”

For spring, Hissen will turn his attention to proteins like lamb as well as a sampling of seasonally colorful spring vegetables and seasonings.

“Things become much lighter in this new season,” he explained. “With much more color than we are used to in our winter dishes.”

Even after years of perfecting this modern cuisine and cooking style, it’s a kind of reinvention that Hissen still enjoys.

“This is a lot of hard work…very intense and stressful,” the chef concluded. “But I love to cook for my customers, family, and friends. Dishes that are simple but interesting are what I truly love to create.”

Ristorante da Benito
222 Galloping Hill Road, Union / 908.964.5850 / dabenito.com