On the surface, fine art and fine cooking are worlds apart, but Reefs Hotel Sous Chef Kok Wan Lee has a special way of blending the two together.

Mr. Lee is the creative force behind the Reefs? new Asian fusion restaurant Ocean Echoes that opened in early May.caught up with Mr. Lee this week to talk about his cooking career and his new restaurant.

?I just started cooking naturally,? said Mr. Lee. ?I wasn?t influenced by my mother or family members. Being a chef is a good way to travel and see the world. Everyone needs to eat.?

Mr. Lee, who is Malaysian, first came to Bermuda in 1988 to work at Fourways Inn. He moved on to the Reefs, M.R. Onions and then to the Stonington Beach Hotel. He was at Stonington for ten years, but left a year after the hotel became the Cocoa Reef Resort. His career has now come full circle and he is back at the Reefs.

?When I first came here I hadn?t done anything art-wise,? he said. ?I was still undiscovered. You need to build your own confidence up before you try something new. I started doing art because I wanted it to be my retirement hobby. From retirement hobby it actually became a second career.?

His art background has affected the food in an obvious way in terms of food presentation.

?It does influence the food on the plate,? said Mr. Lee. ?Especially, since I now know how to play with colours and shapes better than before.?

Mr. Lee said he thinks there is a strong connection between cooking, music and art, because they use the same creative part of the brain. In his art, Mr. Lee often tries to improvise. He will use his fingers to paint or a twig rather than a paint brush sometimes, because he feels it gives the art a more natural feel. He uses these same improvisation techniques in his cooking. ?The art creativity helps me with the fusion cooking,? he said. ?It gives me more confidence about using different ingredients and applying different techniques. Fusion cooking is a kind of liberation.?

Liberation was a word Mr. Lee used frequently to describe the cooking at Ocean Echoes. For Mr. Lee, fusion cooking is about breaking free of standard cooking conventions.

?My art has given me so much confidence about doing this new concept of cooking,? said Mr. Lee. ?Fusion cooking became popular a couple of years ago. It is not a new trend, but it still has a lot more terrain to explore than traditional cooking.?

Some of the exotic dishes on offer at Ocean Echoes include: scallion ginger crepes wrapped with scallops with soya sauce reduction, enoki mushrooms and wasabi salmon roe eggs. There is a daily cold soup such as oxtail consume with lemon grass and ginger. A typical salad at Ocean Echoes might be the Thai green chicken salad, with baby argula and poppy seed vinaigrette with sun dried tomatoes and sun flower seeds. There is also fresh grilled tuna with three seeds and baby bok choy. Each of the seed types, fennel, sesame and cumin are individually toasted and then cooked together in a ginger coconut sauce.

?In terms of whether traditionalists get upset, I think a lot of the time it depends how far you want to explore and experience something new,? he said. ?Fusion cooking is about liberating the cooking from its national or ethnic origin, and borrowing ideas, ingredients and techniques from other types of cooking.?

The Ocean Echoes restaurant is on the terrace at the Reefs overlooking the ocean. There is live music and the food is cooked outside. Mr. Lee said so far the restaurant has proved popular with visitors, but hasn?t yet caught on with locals.

?To be honest, the visitors love it,? he said. ?We have also had a lot of local artists come to eat here, and they liked it. But I don?t think that most Bermudians know about us yet.?

However, Mr. Lee was confident that it would quickly catch on with Bermudians as well.

?Bermuda is such a small community,? he said. ?Different concepts of cooking are quite limited here. Wherever you go, you see the same concept of food and ideas and the same way of cooking.

?I think there really is a market here for fusion cooking. It is a matter of whether the time and opportunities are right. I am quite fortunate because the management of the Reefs believe in me. They have given me a chance to try this out. As you know the Reefs have three restaurant outlets. We decided to take one of them to do fusion cooking, which makes sense to me.?

On a practicality level, fusion cooking relieves some of the logistical pressures of trying to do straight, authentic ethnic cuisine. The menu and recipes can easily be adjusted to incorporate the ingredients are on hand.

?Some of the ingredients needed for Asian cooking are difficult to get here, and fusion cooking can be a way of getting around these problems,? said Mr. Lee. ?Some Asian herbs and spices are difficult to get fresh here.

?Some things aren?t carried on the Island. We have to ship things in a month ahead of time. I am using my painting philosophy for my cooking. The ingredients don?t have to be fixed. In painting, you can always compromise and improvise. It is more adventurous to do things like that. In art, if I don?t have the right colour I can try to mix some other colours to get the right shade. I do the same thing with flavours. Many times, I will substitute dried herbs for fresh ones, for example.?

However, Mr. Lee said most Asian ingredients can easily be ordered from Chinatown in New York City, although it can be costly to fly them in.

?There are other restaurants that offer fusion cooking in Bermuda but unfortunately they only try to introduce one or two dishes,? said Mr. Lee. ?Ocean Echoes offers a whole menu of Asian fusion cooking. It is not just one special or one or two dishes. I don?t think you see anyone else on the island doing something like this extensively.?

Ocean Echoes will only be open seasonally, probably until the end of October. Unfortunately, because it is outdoors, it has to close during bad weather.

Prices range from $12.50 to $16.95 for appetisers, and $28.50 to $29.50 for entrees. To make a reservation, call 238-0222.