What if — gasp! — you didn't serve turkey for Thanksgiving?

A chance encounter with a co-worker got me thinking about this. Turns out she's having relatives this year who don't like turkey. As it happens, there's someone in my family who doesn't like turkey, either. And, of course, some people don't eat meat.

So what would you serve?

My coworker friend is going to imu a corned beef, an interesting option. My family member generally takes the more prosaic option of preparing a crown roast.

But I thought I'd pose the question to some chefs and home cooks and see what they had to say.

Grace Chun, who masterminds the Thanksgiving meal for a sprawling extended family in Kaimukí, said she isn't much of a turkey fan, either, so they always serve several whole fish, Chinese-style, with sizzling oil, shards of ginger, slivered green onions and a splash of shoyu. "We got plenny fishermen in the family, so we always have some fresh fish or, if not, we go to Tamashiro's. Sometimes it's mullet, but it's whatever's fresh. Funny, we always have leftover turkey, but we never have leftover fish."

Former Advertiser food editor and cookbook author Kaui Philpotts said lots of her friends, including her children on Maui, choose the imu route and throw in anything they like and sometimes take the whole meal to the beach.

"I think looking to your own heritage is a great way to get some variety into Thanksgiving. If your heritage is too muddled, adopt someone else's. Have a holiday with Italian, soul food or Scandinavian dishes. After all, Thanksgiving is about stopping for a moment to give thanks. It's not about the turkey. It's about all the people you love and consider family," she said.

David Izumi is a master of the art of smoking foods (he's researching smoking homemade sausage right now and expects to teach a class on it soon; I'll let you know). He said that, in his family, there are also several who don't care for turkey. "We have a huge spread that would satisfy anyone except a vegan," he wrote in an e-mail in response to my query. "We make a smoked or poached salmon, smoked chicken or Cornish game hens, or duck. Would love to try goose one day."

All the fowl are brined first in a salt-sugar-herb mixture, he said.

A meal that would satisfy a vegan is the one suggested by chef and cookbook author Mark Reinfeld of Kapa'a, Kaua'i. Reinfeld forwarded a recipe from his new book (with Jennifer Murray), "The 30-Minute Vegan" (Da Capo/Lifelong books, paper, $18.95). It's for a nut-crusted, sesame-marinated tofu steak with a mushroom-onion gravy of which he writes: "One taste of this gravy and you will discover why we included it in the comfort food chapter. It's rich, it's satisfying and has 'down home' written all over it."

The recipe in the cookbook uses mac nuts for the crust but, for Thanksgiving, Reinfeld recommends pecans, more in keeping with the season. (By the way, although the Blossoming Lotus, the gourmet vegan restaurant in Kapa'a where Reinfeld made his name, closed last December, there is talk of reviving it; we'll keep you posted.)

Chef Alan Wong of Alan Wong's restaurant said that a turkeyless meal for his mom and family would likely be composed mostly of Japanese foods. But, he wrote in an e-mail, "If it were a different crowd and I was doing something different, I would go back to my Lutece days, when I watched (chef and restaurateur) Andre Soltner prepare special-occasion foods."

One that remains fresh in his taste memory is choucroute — "really hearty, a rack of smoked pork loin, a couple of different kinds of sausage, pork belly, sauerkraut and potatoes." Served with "great mustard," he wrote.

His suggested sides are roasted kabocha squash, purple sweet potato, grilled corn and scallion salad with miso and yuzu dressing, assorted mushrooms seared and tossed with garlic Parmesan croutons and celery and tomatoes , bittermelon and tofu salad. And, of course, he writes, "No matter what, gotta have rice."

For dessert, he'd make coconut ginger sweet potato and chestnut mold, haupia ice cream, pumpkin custard pie, Jell-O mold with persimmons and cranberries. (Jell-O? Alan Wong makes Jell-O?)

On Maui, chef Mark Ellman of Mälä and Maui Tacos restaurants said he'd deal with a turkeyless Thanksgiving by serving "the best steak and fish available with a few fun sauces" — Kobe ribeye and Kobe fillet mignon with winter truffles, onaga or 'opakapaka roasted with extra-virgin olive oil and Hawaiian salt and fresh-cracked pepper. Among the sauces he'd serve is the mojo verde, a cilantro-jalapeno pesto popular at Mälä Ocean Tavern. Other options might include a Mediterranean tomato salsa with capers and olives.

Chef George Mavrothalassitis of Chef Mavro restaurant said it's easy for him to think about Thanksgiving without turkey because he grew up in the south of France where, of course, they don't celebrate this American holiday. They do serve turkey, however, once a year at Christmas, often paired with a stuffing made from cepes (aka porcini mushrooms), which are in season during the holidays.

For a Thanksgiving turkey substitute, Mavro, as he's universally known, recommends a menu that he is planning to offer as a special fixed-price promotion in his restaurant starting this week and continuing through the first week of December: roast suckling pig.

He points out that you can stuff a suckling pig as you can a turkey, but his plan is to bone the pork, roast it, crisp the skin and serve it with white sweet potatoes from Moloka'i and a garnish of pickled mustard cabbage.

He chose this option because roast pork pairs beautifully with Beaujolais Nouveau, the young and fresh red wine made from gamay grapes and released on the third Thursday of November each year. This year's vintage is said to be the best in a half century, and Mavro wanted to celebrate the wine with something complementary.

In the course of describing how he will prepare this menu, he offered some interesting culinary advice. Be sure, when roasting meats, that the meat is dry (wipe it well with a paper towel) because excess moisture will affect the texture; the meat steams instead of roasting. And he laid down a rule: "Bake every red meat at low temperature and every white meat at high temperature."

And his opinion of stuffing? "A culinary mistake — whatever you put inside the cavity, you are going to totally lose the texture."