Poke

Introduction

There is nothing quite as local as poke. Go into any grocery store in Hawaii and you’ll find a display case full of pans and pans of raw, chopped ahi, marlin, or other fresh local fish in an array of sauces and seasonings. It’s about as ubiquitous as cans of spam and Locals-brand flip flops (called slippahs here).

It’s served in a bowl, usually with a couple of scoops of rice, some furikake, and maybe a helping of ocean salad on the side.

Sometimes you can even get it with purple sweet potato salad or slices of pineapple tossed with li hing mui (more on that in a later episode).

A poke bowl basically has everything you need in a meal.

Poke is, of course, different from and similar to other raw fish dishes with which you might be familiar. It shares some commonalities with ceviche in that they both feature raw fish and a few diced vegetables in a  light sauce. Poke relies less on getting “cooked” by the sauce though, which pretty much defines ceviche: heavy on the citrus. The acidity actually changes the texture of the fish from raw to something resembling fish being cooked with heat.

Therefore it is a little more similar to crudo, which is demarcated by good, thin-sliced fish drizzled with oil and lemon juice or a vinaigrette. The raw texture of the fish is not altered, as it is with ceviche, so it seems a closer cousin to poke.

If you are a fan of either ceviche or crudo, you will probably, by default, be a fan of poke too. So let’s get into where it came from.

History of Poke

Poke is a native Hawaiian dish, originally made from reef fish, sea salt, seaweed, and crushed kukui, or candle, nut. That was it.

As each new culture arrived, the poke evolved to meet the newcomers’ taste. Most notably, probably, is the influence of the Japanese. The Japanese arrived in Hawaii in the nineteenth century, first as shipwreck survivors, then several decades later as plantation laborers. There are many similarities between sushi and poke. Many shops even offer poke in sushi flavor profiles, like spicy tuna or California roll (one of my personal favorites).

Common additions to modern poke include soy sauce, or shoyu, sesame oil, and  green onions, all of which are fairly common in Asian cuisine.

Recently poke has become more popular across the United States. In fact, we used to regularly get a poke appetizer at a restaurant in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Sycamore House is a lovely restaurant in a historic building, and yeah, their poke was a pretty good stand-in when we had no access to Poke Shack in Kailua Kona.

We love Sycamore. Proper cocktails and an inventive menu. If you are ever in Bay St. Louis, go there. You can thank us later.

Poke Shack is the first place we ever had poke, and it is considered by most to be some of the best in Hawaii. Other restaurants even feature poke from da shack on their menus.

I can honestly say that Poke Shack was taken into consideration when we were deciding to move here. We visited Big Island on our 10th anniversary and a couple years later when we decided it was about time to move on from New Orleans, the Island was one of our top choices. And one of my first thoughts was, “I could eat poke all the time!”

Poke Shack gets  plenty of attention, so our review today is going to focus  on our favorite Hilo-side poke place: Suisan Fish Market. 

Review of Suisan

Suisan dock

First, let’s get this straight: Suisan is not a restaurant. It is a fish market with some tables outside on the sidewalk. It’s so much a fish market that they even have their own dock and weigh station right there on Hilo Bay. Some of the fish for sale in the market even comes right off the dock there.

You can’t really beat the setting if you love that sort of vintage, nautical feel, but they don’t have a lot of variety. Pretty much it’s just poke and sides and a few cold drinks in a fridge.

If you do have a picky eater, there is a lunch counter in the same building that has burgers, fries, and local style lunch plates, so don’t let your non-poke eating friends stop you from indulging.

Hilo bayfront

If the tables outside are full, Liliuokalani Gardens is within walking distance, so take a blanket and make a day of it or find one of the many picnic tables right along the bay. Really, the Hilo Bay front has some of the loveliest urban vistas on the island.

Inside, you are going to be greeted by iced trays of fresh fish, some quite beautiful, like the rainbow-hued parrot fish we saw. The first display is of fillets and steaks, and then the second display is the poke.

fish selection

Suisan is the type of place that will be filled with locals and tourists, so sometimes you have to be a little patient with the people that don’t know exactly how the process of ordering works or they want to take pictures. Sometimes there’s a language barrier. Just go with the flow and show aloha. The meal will be worth it.

Suisan’s variety of poke can’t be beat. On our recent visit, they probably had a dozen different types, including scallop, marlin, octopus, salmon, aku, Kauai prawn, and of course ahi.

When we go, we always split a plate, which is two scoops of poke, two scoops of rice, and two sides.

You have your choice of white or brown rice, and the server will ask you if you want furikake. 

If you are not familiar with this, it is simply Japanese rice seasoning. In the grocery store, it can be found in a dazzling array of flavors including shrimp and kimchi. The version at Suisan is essentially finely diced nori seaweed and sesame seeds. It brings a great salty and nutty flavor to the rice. Don’t pass it up.

The rice, by the way, was cooked perfectly. It stuck together but it wasn’t overly glutinous or gunky. It was also just a tad toothsome, which we both like in our rice and our pasta.

The sides are always pretty much the same, including our favorite, fresh pineapple dusted with li hing mui.  But they also generally have warabi salad, made of ferns. Ocean salad made of seaweed. Edamame. Purple sweet potato. And a few other things. You can buy all these sides separately by the pound as well.

On our most recent visit...actually, every visit...our sides are the ocean salad and the li hing mui pineapple. The pineapple makes a lovely palate cleanser and serves as dessert on the plate as well.

The ocean salad was pretty solid. I think they use more sesame oil or just more sesame seeds there. It just seemed nuttier than I expected. We enjoy their edamame too, but we make it so often at home it’s not a treat when we eat out. It's an easy side for any meal. Super quick to make.

So now let’s get into our poke.

poke plate

What sets Suisan apart from all other poke in Hilo is the quality of the fish they use and the skill with which it is sliced. When you get poke at the grocery store, you’re often going to find a lot of connective tissue or silver skin, making some bites a little too chewy. You might find some of that ahi that’s just a little too dark to be appetizing. Also, even our best groceries aren’t dressing down entire ahi in the back. They are getting their fish from a supplier.

Suisan knows how to cut the fish and they are ARE the source, so you know the fish is super fresh.

So we always try to go for a standard ahi flavor and then something different. On this trip, we first  had spicy tuna. This is one of those sushi inspired flavors. It is dressed in a mayo base and flavored with masago. It’s really good. Not too spicy and the creaminess of the mayo offsets a shoyu-based poke partner on the plate nicely.

The other variety we had was called “Magic Marlin.” It had a shoyu base with maybe a little sriracha thrown in. There was definitely some spice and a sort of orange hue in the sauce.  Limu and green onions diced up fine complimented the marlin nicely in this simple, tasty treatment.

We’d never had this one before, and I’ve got to say, it might be one of my favorites. The marlin has a markedly different taste and texture to the ahi, so they go with each other well. It was a great meal!

Two sodas and a plate that fed both of us ran just under 20 bucks, but the prices shift due to the market price of ahi, so that might not always be the case.

If you have a hankering for poke in Hilo, Suisan is definitely the place to go.

Now if you don’t live where you can get poke, but you do have access to fresh fish, you can always try to make poke at home.

Making Poke at Home

We’re going to go with a sort of modern, Asian-influenced poke here that would be great with rice or layered in a musubi or to fill carb-friendly lettuce cups.

We have even been known to eat poke out of the grocery store container with cocktail sticks and Triscuits. It’s, like, really good.

So let’s get into the ingredients

• About a pound of really good ahi or other sashimi or sushi grade fish. We’ve done it with salmon (from the freezer at Whole Foods, labeled for homemade sushi), and around here you can generally find marlin or aku as well, but ahi is fairly standard and really has the best flavor and texture for poke. Basically, if you might eat it as sashimi or sushi, it will probably work in poke as well. In the show notes, I’ve left a link to a great blog from PBS about how to pick fish.
• Really good salt. We use, exclusively these days, the salt that comes in big bags from KTA. I use it for everything, except curing. It’s a large crystal that really packs a punch in finishing off a dish.
• Soy sauce (aka “shoyu), about two tablespoons for a pound of fish.
• 1 Tablespoon rice vinegar for a pound of fish.
• Limu, or local seaweed, for traditional style. Diced small.
• And then whatever you want for flavor: avocado, tobiko or masago, sesame oil, sesame seeds, green onion or sweet onion diced, chili peppers diced, cucumber (uh, no thanks), green papaya, kimchi, mango, wasabi... It’s really up to you. In this day and age, there is no right or wrong way to do it, though traditionalists might turn up their noses. But it’s not about them, it’s about what YOU want to eat. One of my favorite combos is with masago and avocado, with some (god forbid) K-rab stick (kanikama) added. It’s the California roll style I mentioned earlier. I leave out the cucumber.

Slicing and cleaning the fish. The downfall of a good poke is silver skin or tough connective tissue in the fish. As I mentioned before, this is what makes most grocery store versions inferior to, say, Poke Shack or Suisan. In order to make good poke at home, you have to make sure that each bite is succulent and tender, so it is very important to cut out any tough bits you might encounter. The dice on the fish should be a nice, small cube. You want to be able to have a couple of pieces of fish and whatever accompaniments you threw in, all in one bite. You also want plenty of surface area to interact with the sauce.

Another thing to keep in mind is to avoid the really dark, irony meat that might overtake the flavor. Cut that and set it aside to make stock later or to feed to the cat.

Keep everything cold. Beside tough bits, the other downfall of poke is when it has become warm. Warmth plus fish plus a little time equals funk. You have got to keep everything cold.

After you mix everything, you are going to want it to marry for about thirty minutes in the fridge. You want the shoyu to work itself into the protein a little and the other ingredients to lend their flavors to the whole.

Then serve it up. You can go the traditional route, putting it alongside a nice bowl of white rice, or you can do some crazy stuff with it.

For instance, we love poke nachos. Get some won ton chips and pile that poke on with some unagi sauce and maybe a little sriracha mayo. It makes a great filling for lettuce wraps too if you are doing the low carb thing.

But if you make poke nachos, you need to make sure to waterproof. It’s a fundamental mistake that a couple island restaurants make serving up soggy bottomed nachos. Just slip a slice of lettuce or tender cabbage or something under your poke so you don’t end up with chip failure.

Closing

Just like its cousin ceviche, cold poke is just about perfect for lunch on a warm, tropical day. But don’t limit poke to its traditional state in bowl alongside rice. Have fun with it. Make it your own.

But be safe. Remember eating raw seafood can be hazardous if not done correctly.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our stroll down the poke path this episode.

Links

• Poke in Mississippi? You bet! Get it at Sycamore House in Bay St. Louis: http://www.thesycamorehouse.com/index.html
• Where to get poke and really high grade ahi in Hilo? Suisan! https://www.facebook.com/SuisanFishMarket/
• Make your own ocean salad at home: https://www.food.com/recipe/seaweed-salad-247035
• How to make sure your fish is right for poke: http://www.pbs.org/food/fresh-tastes/myth-sushi-grade/