Two restaurants on opposite coasts have gained renown as modern interpreters of Hawaiian food, but the chefs who run them are reluctant keepers of the flame.

“I never said I was opening a Hawaiian restaurant. Ever,” said Ravi Kapur of San Francisco’s Liholiho Yacht Club. “Because that goes back to the question, What is a Hawaiian restaurant?”

Luau? Plate lunch? Pacific Rim?

“People are always trying to categorize everything,” Kapur said. “It helps them process it.”

Across the country in Manhattan, Chung Chow runs into the same thing with his restaurant, Noreetuh. “Some people might pre-label us as Hawaiian because it’s a convenience thing,” Chow said. His preference: “Call it Hawaiian-influenced or modern American with Hawaiian flavors.”

Still, both chefs, in town this week for the Hawai‘i Food & Wine Festival, will participate in the most Hawaiian of the festival’s events, tonight’s Urban Lu‘au at Salt @ Our Kakaako. Each has been assigned a traditional luau food, the idea being to showcase a contemporary version of each dish alongside the real deal, as prepared by a truly Hawaiian local restaurant.

Kapur has drawn as his dish lomi salmon and poi, but will instead use nairagi (striped marlin), which comes from Hawaii waters, unlike salmon. He’ll turn that into poke, adding the classic lomi ingredients of tomatoes and green onions. It will be served on a “poi puff” made from steamed, pureed, fermented taro that’s been turned into a dough, which in turn is steamed, chilled, sliced, dehydrated and fried. “It comes out like a shrimp chip,” he said.

Chow has been assigned kalua pork, which he is interpreting as smoked pork loin — like pastrami — with pickled Napa cabbage, cilantro and oranges. “It’s a New York-meets-Hawaii kinda thing.”

Both chefs grew up on Oahu, absorbing all the foods and flavors we call “local.” In separate phone interviews they spoke of how this background influences their food and restaurants today.

Local cred

Kapur (Hawaii Baptist Academy, ’95): Born and raised in Hawaii (mostly Kailua). His parents ran a health food store in Kailua and a lunch wagon. His dad also fixed computers.

“My family was eating all the time, and always looking for the best this, the best that. The best minute-chicken cake noodle, the best chow fun.”

Chow (Roosevelt High School, ’93): Came to Hawaii from China as a child; grew up in Pauoa. His parents ran the Chow Noodle Factory on South King Street.

Growing up, “I ate a lot of noodles.” He also has fond memories of Zippy’s in high school, and “lots of plate lunches.” Specifically: “I always miss the shoyu chicken plate lunch.”

Professional cred

Kapur: Food & Wine magazine’s best new chef of 2016; Liholiho Yacht Club was a James Beard Foundation nominee for best new restaurant in the nation this year. “Liholiho may channel the Hawaiian spirit, but no matter what you call it, it’s personal, precise and displays a strong sense of place,” the San Francisco Chronicle said. “It takes inspiration, a great chef and the San Francisco sensibility to create this unique blend.”

Chow: Worked at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bistro in California and Per Se in New York, then with Jonathan Benno to open Lincoln Ristorante at Lincoln Center. The New York Times last year called Chow’s Monkfish Liver Torchon, with jellied passion fruit, pickled pears and a King’s Hawaiian sweet roll “one of the most exciting tastes to wash up on Manhattan’s shores this year.”

Restaurant philosophy

Kapur: Rather than simply put his own spin on tradition, he creates dishes to reflect what he calls “the core values” of both his childhood in Hawaii and his home of San Francisco.

In a rapid-fire list of key taste memories he lists Shiro’s Saimin Haven, Kam Bowl (oxtail soup), Agnes’ Portuguese Bake Shop (malasadas), shopping in Chinatown with his grandmother. And: “We always hit L&L after the beach and the lunch wagon for loco moco before the beach.”

From his menu: beef tongue with kim chee on a poppy seed steamed bun (reminiscent of roast duck bao); pork belly with pineapple, Thai basil and fennel (“reminds me of how my grand­mother used to make kau yuk); tuna poke with radish on a nori cracker (“not like any other poke, but it reminds me of poke in Hawaii”).

Chow: Any definition of “Hawaiian” varies by era, from ancient to plantation to Hawaiian Regional Cuisine and beyond, he said. Noreetuh’s take is “everything that is now, which includes traditional Hawaiian fare as well as what we have now. I don’t want to be stuck in time, where you have to use only salted fish and salted meat.”

Take, for example, his two-pronged take on a classic food: “We have kalua pork straight, a kalua pork rice bowl kinda thing,” roasted 12 hours or more in a banana leaf with salt and mesquite powder (no imu: “fire department going to shut me down, besides … the lack of real estate”). Kalua pork also shows up in a cavatelli pasta dish with Parmesan cheese, chicken stock and pickled cabbage.

He also presents a Spam-like musubi, using beef tongue, common to New York delis, with peanuts and cilantro puree. The influence is a Hawaii version of oxtail soup — “similar offal meat, similar flavor combination.”

Although he could eat Spam three times a day, “We didn’t want to scare people off. Mainland people are scared of Spam for some reason.”

About the names

Liholiho Yacht Club was the name that Kapur’s uncles — who lived on Liholiho Street — gave to the beach parties they’d stage after days spent racing Hobie Cats.

“Noreetuh” is Korean for “playground.”