“Poke” is the Hawaiian word for “to slice” or “cut crosswise into pieces” - depending, I guess, which dialect you opt for. Poke is everywhere - an amazing journey for a somewhat quirky local dish to an (at least) SoCal standby. I keep expecting to hear that Mickey’s Ds has introduced a Big MacPoke Burger. On a recent shopping trip to a local Gelson’s here in LA, my wife picked up several types of poke, including the bedrock variety made from ahi tuna. I asked a few affable locals to tell me why they had been queued up for hours, and it took me a while to figure out it was for something called “poe-kee” - a name I’d never heard before.
Or, to be more precise, I encountered a round-the-block line of locals waiting outside a Maui supermarket to buy poke for their Christmas dinner - a much-respected and very tasty tradition on the Islands. It was more years ago than I like to remember that I first encountered poke during a trip to Hawaii.
