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When H2O Seafood Grill and Sushi Bar’s Executive Chef, Scott Szekretar, thinks about food, he thinks freely. He likes to experiment with traditional and new techniques while using the freshest ingredients to yield the best results.
Szekretar combines the traditional with the new. Capitalizing on the local bounty from Long Island, he builds on H2O’s extensive seafood and sushi menu. A saffron sauce accompanies flounder stuffed with scallops, shrimp and crabmeat. An amaretto butter sauce and lavender rice accompany pecan-crusted salmon. And pears, of course, pop up in creative recipes such as the one featured here on Pear Panache.
The graduate of the Culinary Institute of America knows what Long Islanders like to eat. Born in Mineola, he worked at Huntington’s Red Bar & Restaurant and Coco’s. On Fire Island at Maguire’s, he came full circle from washing dishes as a 14-year-old to head chef eleven years later. In addition to these shore front posts, Szekretar spent five winters in Colorado’s ski resorts. There he finely tuned his fine-dining skills in the kitchens of Terre Bistro, Tramonti and Dandelions and had a chance to show his oyster shucking skills at the raw bar of the trendy Jax Fish House. In 2002, Szekretar joined Tellers Chophouse in Islip. He rose through the ranks from sauté cook to chef de cuisine and in 2004 moved to another Bohlsen family-owned restaurant, H2O Seafood Grill and Sushi Bar, where he is now executive chef.
