Poke has become popular far beyond Hawaii.
Alex Bitter/Insider
Poke has become popular around the world, with restaurants popping up far beyond its home of Hawaii. The US market for poke is expected to grow by $782 million, or 71%, between 2021 and 2026, according to market research firm Technavio.
I tried poke on the US mainland and compared it with what’s available in Hawaii.
The Hawaii poke was simpler but tasted better to me since it wasn’t cluttered with toppings.
Poke, or marinated raw fish, has become popular around the US — and the world.A poke bowl with kimchi.
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Restaurants that serve the dish have popped up everywhere from Manhattan to European capitals.Diners at a poke restaurant in London.
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You can’t get a can of Pepsi or a Big Mac in Moscow anymore, but a quick search suggests you can choose between several poke restaurants in the Russian capital.A map showing poke restaurants in and around Moscow.
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I grew up in Hawaii eating poke, so I decided to try poke in Washington, DC, and compare it with what I could find in Hawaii.
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I started my comparison with a visit to Poke Papa, a restaurant in Washington’s Chinatown.
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Poke Papa has roughly 1,100 reviews on Google, with an average rating of 4.7. That makes it the most reviewed poke shop in Washington, as well as one of the highest-rated.
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At the counter, the first thing that caught my eye was the variety of toppings you could add to your poke. Examples were corn, mango, pineapple, and seaweed salad.
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Poke Papa guests can choose from a list of pre-built “signature” bowls.
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They can also create their own custom bowls, with more-traditional options like spicy tuna and furikake (a mix of dried seaweed, fish, and sesame seeds), as well as unconventional additions such as crab salad and carrot.
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I ordered three of Poke Papa’s signature bowls, each of which came with a few additional-topping options free of charge. The bowls were about $15 each.
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One of the bowls was the “onolicious,” which uses ahi (yellowfin tuna) in a soy sauce as its base. I added seaweed salad, mango, and pineapple as optional toppings.
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The pineapple and mango were odd additions to the bowl. Ultimately, it was my choice to add them, but I wondered what on the menu, if anything, they would complement.
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The fish wasn’t fresh, but I liked the sauce on it the best out of the three bowls I ordered. It reminded me most of the poke I had growing up in Hawaii.
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I also ordered the sakura-salmon bowl, which included salmon marinated in a sauce of cilantro, jalapeño, and yuzu, a citrus fruit that tastes like a cross between a lemon and a grapefruit. I added crab salad, seaweed salad, and corn as optional toppings.
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The yuzu sauce mixed together flavors that didn’t work well together, let alone on poke. Meanwhile, the fish itself didn’t taste much like salmon.
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Overall, each of the three bowls felt like an odd mix of flavors. The mismatch was most pronounced with the fruit and vegetable toppings, but the sauces also disappointed me, especially the yuzu marinate on the salmon.
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After leaving Poke Papa, I headed a few blocks down the street to get something I would find more satisfying for dinner.
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A few days later, I met up with some friends who had also grown up in Hawaii to visit another local poke restaurant: Hilo Poke & Sushi in Washington’s Adams Morgan neighborhood.
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I scanned the picture menu posted outside before entering. Like Poke Papa, the choices seemed to contain several toppings each.
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And like Poke Papa, Hilo’s menu gave diners a lot of choices when it came to toppings. This time, though, I stuck to the restaurant’s signature bowls and did not add any extra toppings.
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The poke bowls at Hilo contained a dollop or two of fish. The “toppings,” meanwhile, made up the majority of what was in the bowls.
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A great example was a bowl called “R. House” on the menu. It contained more cubed cream cheese, which I already thought was an odd choice, than poke.
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One of my friends said that the wide variety of toppings reminded him more of Chipotle or Cava fare than authentic poke from Hawaii, which tends to include few, if any, additions.A Chipotle order.
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I agreed. By this point, it was obvious that a lot of mainland poke restaurants were serving something very different from traditional poke from Hawaii.
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So I flew to the real Hilo, Hawaii, to visit my parents for the holidays — and get some Hawaii poke to compare with what I had on the mainland.
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My destination was a Hawaii supermarket chain called Sack N Save, which operates a store near my family’s house.
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While there are many great restaurants in Hawaii that serve poke, Sack N Save and its sister chain, Foodland, have stores on the most populous Hawaiian islands, making it an easy place to stop for poke.
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Sack N Save and Foodland have built a reputation as a place to get poke, as demonstrated by these reusable bags I found near the front of the store.
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I headed to the back of the grocery store to get to the seafood department and the poke counter.
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I could choose from several kinds of poke, including spicy ahi and octopus.
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There were almost no toppings, just different prices for different poke options. The only add-ons were cucumber kimchi and imitation crab, according to the menu.
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Shoppers can also buy poke by the pound, a popular choice in Hawaii if you’re headed to a party or plan on serving multiple people.
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I kept it simple and ordered a bowl with just spicy ahi, white rice, and furikake.
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At $7.50, it was half the price of the poke bowls I had ordered in Washington — partially because it came from a grocery-store counter.
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While the entire bowl wasn’t as big as the ones I got in Washington, there was a lot more fish than in any of the bowls that I had ordered at Poke Papa or Hilo.
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The fish itself tasted fresher than anything I had in Washington.
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The furikake provided a seaweed-flavored kick to the bowl without overpowering the poke itself.
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This grocery-store poke was simple, but to me, it was superior to anything I ordered at the restaurants in Washington.
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I wanted to understand the disparity between poke on the mainland and in Hawaii, so I talked to Akina Harada, who grew up on the island of Oahu and founded Abunai Poke, a restaurant with locations in Washington and Philadelphia.Akina Harada, the founder of Abunai Poke.
Akina Harada
Harada serves poke similar to what you can find in Hawaii, which means her poke doesn’t come with toppings like mango or pineapple. “If you want something less traditional, per se, then there’s other options,” she said.
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Getting quality fish is a challenge outside Hawaii, Harada said. Abunai sources its ahi from farms on the East Coast, a higher-quality, more-expensive option than the frozen fish that many poke restaurants use, she said.
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Those two differences — fresh fish and fewer toppings — made the poke I had in Hawaii much better than the copy-cat versions I tried on the mainland.
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Before I left Hawaii, I made sure to eat as much good poke as I could. The cluttered poke bowls of the mainland just didn’t hit the spot for me.
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If you can’t get to Hawaii but like poke, I recommend ordering ahi or salmon marinated in spicy mayo or soy sauce. And, most importantly, skip the toppings.Poke from Koloa Fish Market on the island of Kauai.
Michelle Mishina
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