Poke food trend takes off in Fresno

Poke, a popular Hawaiian comfort food and one of the hottest food trends in the U.S., has firmly landed in Fresno.

This simple yet tasty dish is popping up on the menus of several local restaurants and is the specialty of Pokiland, a new northeast Fresno restaurant that has customers lined up out the door.

“I don’t think there is another place like this in Fresno,” says Cathy Perez of Fresno, who was recently having lunch at Pokiland with her daughter, Emerson. “It’s fresh, tasty and really reminds me of Hawaii.”

So what is poke (pronounced poh-kay) and why has it become so popular?

For starters, poke is bite-size pieces of raw fish, typically tuna, that is marinated or seasoned prior to serving. In Hawaii, poke is served by itself or with a side of rice or vegetables. In the U.S., you can find Hawaiian-style poke along with multiple spinoffs, such as poke in a bowl of rice, over seaweed, in a salad or layered over tortilla chips for Asian-inspired nachos. You can even find poke tacos in Southern California.

Poke makers say people are gobbling up the dish because it plays off of our love of sushi, is generally healthy and can be customizable.

Locally, you can find poke at several restaurants, including Central Fish Market, 1535 Kern St., Fresno; Rio Acai Bowls, 1915 Fulton St., Fresno; Miyako Japanese Restaurant, 132 W. Nees Ave., Fresno; KuniSama, 6825 N. Willow Ave., Fresno; and Pokiland, 1189 E. Champlain Drive, Fresno.

KuniSama and Miyako serve a poke salad with chunks of tuna topped with either avocado or sesame seeds and served on a bed of seaweed. Central Fish sells poke by the pound in the store or in a bowl in their restaurant. And as one of Fresno’s premier fish suppliers, they also sell lots of tuna to Valley restaurants serving poke.

“Within the last three or four months, we have seen a huge increase in the demand for fish,” says Morgan Doizaki, manager at Central Fish. “You know, so many people go to Hawaii and when they come back, they want to be a little Hawaiian, so they start eating poke.”

Rio Acai gives customers three different options: traditional, a spicy bowl with a sriracha-based sauce, or one with kimchi.

Rio Acai’s bowls are perfect for a quick lunch. The chunks of mild-tasting but flavorful fish are a nice compliment to the warm white rice.

Carley Feil, manager of Rio Acai, said the restaurant likes to keep its poke simple yet flavorful. The tuna is marinated in soy sauce, ponzu sauce – a combination of soy sauce and citrus – green onion, yellow onion and sesame oil. To serve, the cubed fish is scooped onto a warm bed of white rice and topped with seaweed.

Sophia Cummings, a co-owner of Rio Acai Bowls, said people unfamiliar with poke should think of it as more of a deconstructed sushi roll.

“I tell people if you love sushi, you will love poke,” Cummings says. “And it’s a perfect lunch, fresh fish with a flavorful sauce.”

Binh Tran and Tram Tran, owners of Pokiland, are big fans of poke, having spent time in Southern California going to college, working in sushi restaurants and eating plenty of raw fish.

“We saw it blowing up in Los Angeles and loved the idea of being able to build your own bowl,” says Binh Tran. “You can have it any way you like.”

Pokiland gives customers many ways to enjoy poke, from picking the size of the bowl to choosing the ingredients. You can make it as simple or as fancy as you like. Pokiland has 10 choices of proteins, including crab, tuna, tofu and smoked squid. You also get a choice of toppings, from wasabi to fried onions.

And for many, the best part of the Pokiland experience are the sauces: spicy mayo, garlic miso, citrus ponzu, unagi sauce and “da bomb,” a secret house-made spicy sauce made with 10 different spices.

“That da bomb sauce is fire,” says Pokiland customer Amauri Saucedo of Fresno. “And when you start mixing it with the garlic miso, it’s like out of this world.”

Served as nachos, poke takes on a whole different feel and taste. The saltiness of the tortilla chip topped with a chunk of tuna, seaweed, masago – tiny fish eggs – and the “da bomb” sauce will make you a convert or send you back to eating the more traditional poke.

“It’s different, but I really like it,” says Tram Tran.

Binh Tran and Tram Tran, who are unrelated, say they have been overwhelmed at the response from their customers. Their lunch rush lasts until nearly 3 p.m.

The restaurant has become so popular that just eight months after opening the couple, who plan to marry, is working on a second location in the Herndon and Fowler avenue area of Clovis. Tram Tran estimates that nearly half of their customers come from the east side.

“We wanted to bring something new and different to the Fresno area,” Tram Tran says. “And people have really responded.”

This story was originally published August 23, 2016 at 11:00 AM with the headline "Poke food trend takes off in Fresno."