Specialty Of The House: 75 Main

Walter Hinds, the new chef at Southampton's 75 Main, has a mission. He wants to put a dent in the East End culinary scene. If enthusiasm has anything to do with impact, he will.

"Cooking is my passion. It's what I want to do more than anything else in the world. I love it, daily."

Mr. Hinds's dedication to his art is obvious (his eyes literally sparkle when he gets talking about food), and so, too, is his enjoyment of what he does. "It should be all about having fun," he said, admitting he is "obsessed" when it comes to quality.

"I really want it to happen." By "it" he means the achievement of excellence in cuisine, service, wine, and ambiance - in short, being one of the best of the best on the East End.

He has been at the restaurant a month and a half, and feels he's found a team, including the owner, June Spirer, that shares his understanding of food and his aspirations. "That's why I'm here," he said last week.

The Port Jefferson-born chef is a newcomer to 75 Main, but no stranger to the East End. He has lived in Southampton off and on for eight years and spent a year and half of that time working at Karen Lee's in Bridgehampton under its chef and co-owner, Robert Durkin.

Trained at the Peter Kump School in Manhattan, Mr. Hinds worked at some of the city's better-known restaurants - the Gotham Bar and Grill under Alfred Portale, Sign of the Dove with Andrew D'Amico, Odeon under Patrick Clark, and Match Uptown as executive chef - before heading east.

Like any lifelong gastronome, he grew up surrounded by good cooks. "My mom had an immense cookbook collection . . . and my grandfather, I renamed him 'the Cooking Man.' " His parents were from Panama, so he was introduced to more than average American fare in his formative years.

Now, fresh from four months in Paris, where he worked at Lucas Carton with the world-renowned chef Alain Senderens, Mr. Hinds brings contemporary French techniques and principles of cooking along with a love of Asian ingredients to his new culinary home.

Vegetables figure prominently in his dishes. He cooks with a vast variety of spices, and his sauces are based not on cream and butter but on fruit and vegetable juices, broths, bouillons, and oils.

While he appreciates the level of excellence inherent in fine French cooking, he is inspired by the lightness of Asian cuisines and looks to Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Cantonese, Mongolian, and Szechuan food for inspiration.

The recrafted 75 Main menu has hints of this - a seared-tuna appetizer with stir-fried Asian greens and crisp rice noodles, for example - but, said Mr. Hinds with a slightly mischievous grin, "It's not as fierce as I want it to be."

His creative flair will be more evident on the spring menu. "I love to play. That's where my spirit is, and spring is my favorite season to play."

Among the Asian-inspired dishes, diners can expect at least one entree influenced by the foods of the chef's childhood: roasted chicken with black beans, coconut rice, and sweet plantains.

Walter Hinds's Warm Chocolate Torte

Ingredients:

5 oz. unsalted butter

1 lb. bittersweet chocolate, chopped

6 egg yolks

7 Tbsp. sugar

6 egg whites

11/2 Tbsp. sugar

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Melt the butter with the chocolate. Let cool. Whip the egg yolks with the seven tablespoons of sugar, then fold into the chocolate. Whip the egg whites with the remaining one-and-a-half tablespoons of sugar into stiff peaks. Fold into the chocolate mixture.

Lightly spray eight six-ounce cake molds with a non-stick spray. Fill each mold three-quarters of the way. Put them on a sheet pan and place in the center of the oven.

Bake for about 15 minutes. The finished product should be slightly underdone in the center. Serve warm.

Serves eight.