Red sand beach and kiawe grilled chicken? It’s hard to beat that combo. In 2012, Russell Kaho’okele founded this humble huli huli chicken stand, which features a grill framed by cords of kiawe wood near the vivid beach. Order in a bamboo hut under kamani trees that drop fruit that will pelt your head if you’re not careful. Sit inside at communal bamboo tables or outside at picnic tables. Each chicken is juicy, with smoky skin and a bath of savory sauce.

Chef Joey Macadangdang, who grew up in the Philippines and spent two decades working for Roy Yamaguchi, opened his eponymous restaurant in the sunken Whalers Village food court. The colorful space features a wood counter with speckled top, tile walls, and yellow booths with tables touting miniature boomerangs. Blackboard menus yield Hawaiian comfort foods prepared with precision. Poke stars hamachi and comes tossed with local ingredients like ogo, pohole fern, and sweet Maui onion. Pork loin sports a complex sauce that contains tamarind and coffee. Filipino influences factor into dishes like pancit, a noodle stir-fry with vegetables and chopped shrimp that benefits from a squeeze of calamansi.

Chef Marc McDowell presides over this casual restaurant and bakery at the mouth of Maui’s Upcountry. Kula Bistro features an olive green facade and a dining room with cream colored walls, panoramic paintings, and necessary network of ceiling fans. Sandwiches and salads are both possible, though you can easily go bigger. Honey dipped chicken is a good value, with three crisp-crusted pieces plated with steamed rice and potato salad. Fresh catch changes daily, but could include firm monchong, which is available served over Caesar salad. For dessert, raid a pastry case loaded with baked goods, cakes and a particularly good lilikoi cheesecake with tangy, creamy filling and Graham cracker crust.

This ambitious bakery and cafe, a sister to Star Noodle and Aloha Mixed Plate, is located just south of Lahaina. The space features reclaimed wood planks, a high-top table crafted from an old shipwreck, and a blackboard touting contributing farms all help build the establishment’s charm. So do a packed pie display case, boxes of house-made bread and a series of sandwiches made on said bread. Chicken and waffles and the Lahaina Dog are just two of executive chef Marcus Whisenant’s more recent revelations. Saving room for pie is imperative, especially banana cream, Maui pineapple mac nut, or a flaky apple hand pie.

Kellee Houghtaling and husband Ryan applied lessons learned from her parents’ pie stores in Michigan, opening Maui Pie in a Kihei Strip mall in 2015. The glass-fronted space features wood tables on the patio and an interior with tan and pink walls lined with colorful Island style images. Maui Pie produces a ranges of pies with either pastry or crumb tops. Fruit fillings change with the seasons, but could involve big pieces of peach and strawberry. They also bake chicken pie pots and lilikoi pie, which is similar to Key lime, only more Hawaiian.