FEW restaurants match their customers' style and spirit as closely as New World Home Cooking, which sits between free-wheeling Woodstock and down-to-earth Saugerties. If you like unusual, slightly quirky dining experiences, this is the place. Ric Orlando, the owner and head chef, has created a Mardi Gras for the senses in his earthy fusion of Far Eastern, American southern and Tex-Mex flavors.

As often as possible, Mr. Orlando cooks with organically grown or local products, like the enormous hen-of-the-woods maitake mushrooms he unearthed from a nearby wood and carried through the restaurant one evening. They showed up later in his ''No Crash'' Risotto (made with brown rice as opposed to the blood sugar-spiking Arborio) and oyster mushrooms from another plot garnished a grass-fed, hormone-free, Montana-bred strip steak.

The Vietnamese street-style calamari, dusted with rice flour and lightly fried in peanut oil, left me wanting more. So did the chicken satay served with a cool-and-sweet melon salad and creamy coconut-peanut sauce.

A word about spice: Mr. Orlando rates every item on his ''Ric-ter scale'' of zero to 10. The bottom range is easy to handle -- garlic, herbs and citrus for kick. But be forewarned about the upper reaches: the Cajun-peppered shrimp, at 7.5, will be gut-churning to some. Still, its lemon-black-pepper-and-rosemary butter sauce was so good that one of my dining companions sopped it up with every piece of available bread. The fire quotient can usually be modulated on request.

Salads, however, are always safe. The Tropical Exotics and Hudson Valley plates start with organic mesclun greens, topped either with macadamia nuts, fruit chutney and organic chËvre, or apples, red onion, toasted filberts and blue cheese. Both are luxuriant.

Meat dishes like the Cuban pot roast and the strip steak were satisfying. Thai green curry stew with tofu will appeal to nonmeat eaters who feel ignored by mainstream restaurants. Mr. Orlando has concocted a dish of tofu stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes, arugula, ginger and walnuts. A valiant effort, but it's still tofu.

Fish dishes were stellar. A special of blackened catfish fillet served with homemade mashed potatoes and roasted vegetables tasted bracingly fresh. Seared sushi-grade tuna prepared with a piquant olive rub or in Thai barbecue style is a house staple.

Desserts change nightly. We tried a heady, unusual dish of figs marinated in dark rum and served with vanilla ice cream and caramelized sugar. Tres leches cake, topped with a silken mixture of heavy cream, evaporated milk and sweetened condensed milk and fresh peaches, was international-style comfort food. New World always offers a vegan dessert, and often it's a no-eggs-no-cream-no-wheat chocolate cake. The garnish of fresh raspberry purÈe helps counter its lack of punch. Dessert time, like the restaurant itself, is no place for the faint of heart. __
NEW WORLD HOME COOKING
1411 Route 212, Saugerties, _(845)246-0900.
Food- GOOD
ATMOSPHERE ‚ Rambunctious.
Service is friendly and competent. Live music on weekends. _
RECOMMENDED DISHES -- Vietnamese street-style fried calamari, chicken satay; Ric's Best Tropical Exotics salad, Hudson Valley salad, blackened catfish, mussels in lemongrass and beer, Thai green curry stew, mission figs foster, tres leches cake. _ Reviewed by The Times: Oct. 5, 2003