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Food guide

How to find good poke

Poke in Hawaii is cubed raw fish seasoned simply and sold by weight from a deli case. The mainland version — a bowl you assemble from twelve toppings — is a different product, and the main risk with it is that the fish becomes the least considered ingredient.

What separates a good one from a bad one

  • Fish that looks translucent, not flat red — Fresh ahi has depth and slight translucency. Uniform bright red usually means it was treated with carbon monoxide to hold colour, which is legal and tells you it is not fresh-cut.
  • Cut to order, or a case that turns over fast — Pre-cubed fish sitting in dressing goes mushy at the edges.
  • Restrained seasoning — Traditional poke is shoyu, sesame oil, onion, limu, inamona. If the fish is buried in spicy mayo, you cannot taste whether it is good.
  • A short topping list — The best poke counters offer a few things well. Twenty toppings is a salad bar with fish in it.
  • They will tell you what came in — A counter that knows its supplier and says so is the one to use.

What to order

  • Shoyu ahi — The classic. Soy, sesame, sweet onion. Order this to judge the fish.
  • Spicy ahi, second — Good, but the mayo hides a lot.
  • Limu or seaweed poke — If they have it, they are cooking Hawaiian rather than bowl-shop.
  • Over rice, warm — The rice should be warm and lightly seasoned, which improves the fish.
  • Skip the twelve toppings — Two or three. The fish is what you are paying for.

Where to find poke

Open listings put 1,897 poké shops across the US. These are the cities and campuses with the most of them.

Cities with the most

New York, NY 48 Los Angeles, CA 30 Honolulu, HI 30 Seattle, WA 29 San Diego, CA 25 Las Vegas, NV 24 San Francisco, CA 22 Chicago, IL 21 San Jose, CA 19 Houston, TX 19 Austin, TX 15 Tampa, FL 13

Campuses with the most within a mile

Touro University 21 CUNY Graduate Center 21 FIT 17 Baruch 14 Pace University 11 Seattle U 10 NYU 10 City Colleges of Chicago-Harold Washington College 10 Seattle Central 9 BMCC 9

A few to start with

Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.

How Savor Scout looks for it

Poke searches distinguish Hawaiian-style counters from build-your-own bowl chains, which are different products at similar prices. The matcher reads reviews for fish-quality language and for traditional preparations like limu and inamona, which only appear where a place is cooking the original.

Find poke near you →

Looking in a particular city?

Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.

All 1,000 cities →

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