Of all the culinary staples to be found at a luau, poi — a nutrient-rich paste made from mashed taro root — is the most divisive. As purple as a fading bruise, with the texture of baby food, the sweet and sometimes sour starch, once a pillar of the Native Hawaiian diet, offends the average American palate — which is exactly what prompted chef Lee Anne Wong to get creative with it. At Koko Head Cafe, her popular all-day brunch restaurant in Honolulu, she ferments poi into yogurt, sours it into hollandaise sauce, and bakes the koena, or the outer scrapings off the taro’s corm, the plant’s fuzzy underground stem, into dense but flaky biscuits.

Wong, who competed in the first season of “Top Chef,” is one of a handful of local chefs reinterpreting taro (known in Hawaii as kalo) for modern diners. By doing so she hopes to invigorate a Native Hawaiian culinary tradition, which for centuries relied heavily on the crop for both physical and spiritual sustenance (the vegetable features in the origin stories of Polynesian deities like Kane, the god of sunshine and fresh water). She also sees the plant as an exciting gateway to flavor. “Once you understand how to work with poi it becomes this incredible ingredient that’s really diverse and flexible,” she says, noting that the poi typically served at luaus geared toward tourists is factory produced. Compared to hand-pounded poi, “it’s the difference between having Whole Foods sushi and actually sitting down for an omakase from a real sushi chef,” she says. For this she pays a hefty price: between $12 and $16 a pound for pa‘i‘ai, the hand-pounded slab of pre-processed taro corm that becomes poi when mixed with water. “When you taste the stuff that’s been hand-processed and made with love, get that,” she says. “I think the mana” — a Polynesian concept that loosely translates to power — “is actually in the food.”

Here, six restaurants in Hawaii that are spotlighting taro in ways both new and old, from a six-course tasting menu in the Maui resort community of Wailea to a take-out-only shack off the Kamehameha Highway on Oahu.