![]() Grocers not gourmetĬubed marinated raw fish (the word “poke” means to cut in Hawaiian), poke is most definitely not served in a bowl in the Aloha State. But as consumers of Hawaiian cuisine and culture, at the very least we should be aware and respectful of what is poke. Not sure which way the trend is going to go moving forward. Not to mention the myriad of colorful photogenic toppings, virtually unheard of in Hawaii. On the other hand, as many poke bowls are increasingly turning to farmed salmon and other fish types instead, it makes them this much less “Hawaiian”. At a chain restaurant level, a scale so much larger than within Hawaii, it makes using the finite fish like ahi tuna extremely unsustainable. Except now it also includes the chain poke bars across the mainland US and elsewhere in the world. Indeed, ahi tuna still dominates Hawaiian poke today. With the arrival of Japanese workers in the late 19th century and the advent of more advanced fishing fleets in the Pacific, the predominant poke fish choice shifted from reef species to deepwater fish, mainly ahi. near-shore fish) was on hand and serve it raw, seasoned with sea salt, seaweed or limu, a kind of algae. Poke is rooted in the days when native Hawaiian fishermen would cut up whatever reef fish (i.e. ![]() Hawaiians have gone our entire lives explaining to visitors that it’s called poke (“poh-kay”), not “pohk.” That was part of the process-teaching and explaining what it is.” A bit of history You don’t just change a word to sell it better. It would be like if I didn’t know how to pronounce your last name and said, screw it, and changed it around. “That may seem like a minor modification, but as someone born and raised in Hawaii, its implications resonated. I admit I even made this mistake myself, having first heard of the dish from one of the countless “poké bowl bars” that had popped up around Los Angeles.Īs Hawaiian chef Mark “Gooch” Noguchi put it talking to First We Feast: Let’s straighten up the basics first – it’s poke not poké . With poke bowls, however, the #instafood craze put a cherry on the cake of the decades-long process of commodification and appropriation of Hawaiian culture. “The Algorithm” loves the seemingly innocent smoothie bowls, buddha bowls or açai bowls. It is not a secret for digital creators in the food industry, myself included, that bowls tend to perform better and get more engagement on social media. ![]() The ‘gram has been deciding how and what we eat. Typically for Instagram, it’s style over substance. Poke bowls have taken the online – and offline – world by storm and confused us all as for what poke actually is. ![]()
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