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Poki Poke: Hawaiian food comes to Brussels

11:09 18/03/2018

Poke (pronounced poh-kay) is an ancestral Hawaiian food - and it has just arrived in Brussels for the first time.

For hundreds of years native Hawaiians ate raw fish (i’a maka), kneaded with their fingers (lomi) or cut crosswise in pieces (the literal meaning of the word poke). They added salt to preserve the fish, crunchy limu (seaweed) for texture and brine, and inamona (buttery kukui-nut hearts, roasted and pounded into rubble).

Deliciously addictive, it is usually served on a bowl of white rice. Nowadays it is widely available across the Hawaiian Islands and is made with many different marinades and sorts of fish and seafood including octopus.

Shu, a 24-year-old Brussels native, has opened Poki Poke, a restaurant on the Chaussée d’Ixelles next to Place Flagey. "I really like fish," he says. "I’m a sushi addict and last year I travelled around the world and I came across poke in several countries.

"It was a great discovery for me because I had never heard of it and it’s so tasty. So I thought, there’s no poke in Brussels so maybe when I get back I could open my own restaurant."

He is offering seven different combinations or you can build your own. "On the white rice base you have the raw fish (salmon or tuna or the fish of the day) diced and marinated and garnished with vegetables and/or fruit so it’s very fresh," he says.

And he has come up with another way of serving poke, the pokirrito: "a mix of poke, maki and burrito, with the poke and rice wrapped in nori like a maki but it’s as big as a burrito".

Poki Poke, Chaussée d'Ixelles 331

Written by Richard Harris