A Poke Bowl is a traditional Hawaiian dish made with fresh raw fish, rice, vegetables, and other accompaniment, lashed with a carefully selected sauce. It’s not only deliciously low in calories, but it’s also packed with vitamins and nutrients, making it an ideal choice for health-conscious eaters.
Hoke Poke is a chain poke restaurant coming out of Canada, bringing Taiwan the fresh flavours of lovingly prepared seafood, sticking it in a bowl, mixing in some aromatics and oils, serving it with your choice of white rice, brown rice, or salad, and adding your own choice picks of their other accompaniments.
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Hoke Poke has a couple of branches in Taipei, one being right at Qing Guang Market near Zhongshan Elementary School MRT station, and the other near the Xinyi Anhe MRT station at Tonghua (Linjiang) Street Night Market.
Here at QingGuang there’s no eat-in offering, but there are lots of parks in the local area, and Maji Square is a short walk away next to Yuanshan MRT station, too.
This place is so convenient for ordering – if you take a snap of this QR code, you can order ahead of time using Line, then just pick it up and pay for it when you arrive, awesome!
The Menu
You can easily place an order by choosing the poke bowls they already designed for you, or creating your own bowl. So not only can you use the menu above to decide on what you’d most like, but you can also use their online system here and hit the ‘translate’ button on Google Chrome to change it to English. The translation is pretty good, having checked it.
The basic rules of the menu here are:
- You choose whether you want white rice, brown rice, lettuce, or a mix of rice and lettuce.
- You choose what protein you would like. (1 portion for $159, 2 portions for $199, prices may vary depending on the protein or sides)
- You choose 3 of the side accompaniments.
- You choose 1-3 toppings.
- You choose 1-3 sauces.
If you choose the designed bowls, then you only need to choose your base and protein. If there’s anything you don’t want from the bowl, you can ask them to remove it for you.
Now, Hoke Poke does not take its sauce game lightly. They pride themselves on the curated sauce offerings here. In fact, they take their sauce game so seriously, that you cannot have a sauce on the side or in a little pot. No. It’s either sauce on the poke bowl, or no sauce at all!
They recommended us to go with 2 sauces, which initially struck me as odd until I tried it, and now I will always be a 2 sauce guy.
One of the most fun things about choosing your own Poke Bowl is being able to feast your eyes on each of the individual offerings right here in these little metal tins. The pop of colours is all so exciting!
We went for 3 bowls, with 1 white rice and salad, 1 brown rice and salad, and 1 with only salad.
No.3 Yuzuke 和風柚子醋 $199
The Yuzuke bowl has cucumber, seaweed, coriander/cilantro, green onions, and fish roe. We chose 2 proteins with this one, which were shrimp and tuna. The sauce used here is the Yuzu vinegar soy sauce-based one, and it has that hit of sour saltiness that you want in a dish like this.
There’s a nice theater involved with poke. As everything gets spooned into the metal bowl and lashed with seasoning and sauces, it is then stirred vigorously to allow all ingredients to be coated and mixed up together.
The pops of colour here are wonderful. The fresh cucumber, tuna, and coriander all bounce off of each other.
Topped with some fish roe, the dish is complete. At Hoke Poke, you can expect everything to be fresh, crispy, and packed with flavour. The seaweed is crunchy, the ginger has the nice acidity that is needed to cut through the flavours and help you identify the differences between the tuna, plump shrimp, and cucumber. This bowl had half white rice and half salad. All delicious!
Our own selection Poke bowl (3 proteins) $254
I wanted that blow-torched tuna and salmon smell, and also curious about the house-special spicy tuna, so we went for 3 proteins here. One more serving of protein needs to add $45, if you want the house-special spicy tuna, you need to pay $10 extra. Similar to many sushi restaurants, Hoke Poke blow-torch the fish to give it a nice sear on the outside.
This bowl started off with jalapenos, fish roe, corn, sesame, seaweed, and a ball of house-special spicy tuna. That ball of spicy tuna there is the winner here!
As all ingredients are ceremoniously stirred together and then put into the bowl, you can see how each and every ingredient gets covered with the sauce, allowing flavours to combine nicely.
I really like the seaweed here, really glad this is the basic accompaniment in each poke bowl (as well as the crab meat and tofu). The imitation crab meat is fine, but I would almost prefer two helpings of seaweed instead. If you ask, maybe you can get it!
The sauce on this was a mix of spicy mayonnaise and onion vinegar. Really good combination!
We went full lettuce here, with no rice at all. The heaviness of the tofu and the spicy tuna still gave it the feeling of having enough starch, though. Now, let me tell you about that tofu! Firm on the outside but deliciously silky smooth on the inside – it’s so delicious.
The smoky blow-torched flavour comes through on the fish nicely, but I wouldn’t particularly say that it is any more special than any of the other meats. In fact, I would probably prefer the shrimp and tuna from the Yuzuke bowl, above. That’s not to say it wasn’t good, but I think I prefer the crunchy freshness of the shrimp and the soft delicate nature of the tuna. If you’re a bit skeptical of having raw fish, the torched ones might be a good option for you.
That spicy tuna ball is great. It has the texture of sweet potato with a good kick of chilli, but you still retain the flavour from the fish. Yes, get it!
No.7 Chef’s Special 主廚特製醬汁 $209
In the Chef Special, you will find onions, coriander/cilantro, fish roe, cucumber, jalapenos, fried onions, and seaweed. The 2 proteins that we got with this are sous vide chicken and salmon. The sauce on this is the wasabi mayonnaise. It was good, but I would probably not bother with the wasabi mayonnaise again, as I am not such a fan of wasabi, personally.
Notice here the thick chunks of sous vide chicken interspersed with that salmon? Yes, it was really good! I don’t know why, but it feels weird going to eat a Poke bowl and ordering sous vide chicken. I mean, yes it is healthy food, but it’s not what I originally think of when I thought of Hawaiian poke.
Again, all ingredients were crunchy fresh, and packed with flavour.
Seriously, though, get that chicken!
Uhmm yeh, I got Poke’d in QingGuang. And never has that apostrophe been so important…
All 3 of these Poke bowls were really, really good. Whether it is the spicy tuna one, the wasabi mayonnaise one, or the shrimp one. You seriously cannot go wrong with any of these!
The bottom line
Which would you recommend most? All 3 are awesome, but I would lean towards the No.3 Yuzuke bowl, with a scoop of that spicy tuna ball added on.
Why eat Poke? Healthy food can sometimes be hard to come by in Taiwan. Salty braised food, deep fried chicken, fatty pork. Yes, they are all delicious. But, whenever you want a salad, get yourself to Hoke Poke for your fix, it will not disappoint you.
Where is it?
※ This article is a collaborative article with Hoke Poke.