Spicy Bowl
Aloha Poke - Fogelsville, PA
I spend most of the first 40 years of my life believing that I was part Hawaiian, until I received the results of two DNA tests showed that my maternal grandfather isn't a blood relative. If I'm being completely honest, the family part of it doesn't really affect me all that much. I'm not at all close with my mother's side of the family, but even if I were, these results wouldn't have made me treat them any differently. It did kind of rock my world a bit though. Imagine having a culture that you thought was your own ripped out from under you. Sorry guy, your grandmother was fooling around behind your grandfather's back, and as a result, your ethnicity is a lie. Not cool.
So anyway, even in the days that I did think I was Hawaiian, I still had never heard of a Poke Bowl. I spent about a month in Hawaii in the summer of 1988 and don't ever remember seeing one. The main food that I remember from that trip is poi... lots and lots of poi. That should have been my first clue that I might not be a real Hawaiian. I thought poi was pretty terrible, but these poke bowls are the exact opposite. I think I could live off of these!
If you've never had a poke bowl before, picture getting a bowl at Chipotle, but the protein and vegetables that you're choosing from are made up mostly of sushi ingredients instead of Mexican food. I had the Spicy Bowl, which includes spicy tuna, spicy salmon, crab meat, kimchi, edamame, corn, cucumber, jalapeno, crispy onion and ginger with spicy mayo and sriracha sauce. It was delicious! If there was an Aloha Poke in my hometown, I'd probably eat there once a week at least.
