Poke U

Yet another one of these "Chi-poke", fast casual places. This one in the food court of Zion Market. The now ubiquitous, pick the seafood, pick the toppings, pick the sauce.......kind of place.

It's the typical drill, you pick what you want...rice or salad, etc.....fish scooped with what looks like a 1/2 ounce scooper....and you get....

Well, not that. That's a real poke bowl....from Ono Seafood. This was $7.50 back when we visited; I think it's now like eight bucks or so.

Here's the $9.95 bowl + $1 for avocado since looking at the fish, I thought I'd needs something with a bit of creaminess to set things off.

Folks were nice....they gave me some miso soup...pretty dark looking stuff, but it was not bad. Not too salty. The tuna and salmon looked just barely passable and the albacore not too good, so I went with tuna, salmon, and two scoops of scallops, which was a mistake as the scallops were still slightly frozen and had none of the nice sea-salty sweetness I enjoy. The tuna was on the dry side, the salmon passable. The rice was adequately prepared; though the cho-jang like sauce was watered down and lacked enough of the sweetness of versions I enjoy.

Still, two of the good things about the place is; they open at 1030 and I often have weird lunch hours, and they are fairly close by in the Zion Market Food Court....where I usually don't have to fight tooth and nail for parking.

A couple of weeks later I returned.

In the mood for something lighter, I went with the salad version of the medium bowl...again $9.95 + $1 for avocado.

This time around I had some albacore, which wasn't very good, slightly off tasting. The salmon had a lot of connective tissue....the tuna looked decent and I got a double scoop, which was good move. The soy-mustard dressing added enough moisture to things....as you can tell it's rather dried out; though not as bad as what I recently had at Poki One and Half....plus they know how to spell poke.

What did make me laugh was when one of my coworkers accidentally called this place "Pork U"..... The shop also makes everything else the other places in the food court don't...from ramen to teriyaki bowls to (con) fusion "nachos".

As for all these poke places? Well, it'll be interesting to see what happens when we hit saturation point. So far; I think the best of these places, not including the ones that actually "make" poke might be Tokyo Deli Downtown?

Poke U (In the Zion Market Food Court)
7655 Clairemont Mesa Blvd
San Diego, CA 92111
Open Daily
1030am - 830pm

Comments

[kat]

:(

[caninecologne]

Connective tissue - eww.

[Derric]

On the Tokyo Deli note, they have a location in Hillcrest now. It's in the same shopping center as Trader Joe's and Ike's Place.

[Kirk]

Most of these type of places are exactly that Kat!

Yeah, kind of sloppy to leave that on the cut fish CC!

Hi Derric - Yeah, I noticed they had opened in HC.....which is why I specified downtown. Have you checked out the HC location yet?

[RedDevil]

Just got back from Kona where had some great poke but makes me sad about most of the places in SD. The one exception is Kawamata in Dana Point which is pretty good for this mainlander. Zarlito's looks promising but haven't been yet.

[Kirk]

I agree RD......it's more of a maximizing profits/fad/concept kind of thing here. Zarlitos is decent; sometimes a bit on the sweet side....but is actual poke.

[MrZ]

Hi Kirk!

There's a similar poke explosion in Seattle. The newest one near me is called "Go Poke" and is a "chi-poke" place like this Poke U. I was just bemoaning to MrsZ about the "Chipotleization" of restaurants like these. I don't want to have to make 8 choices to get my lunch!

[Kirk]

Hey MrZ - Hope all is well! You know; it would be ok if the product was good....but most times, it's just mediocre. It's really nice to hear from you.