Kapahulu poke restaurant already looking to expand

Da Hawaiian Poke Co. is up and running, with four partners including Mark Oyama opening the poke-focused restaurant with an eye toward quickly expanding the concept to Japan and California.

The restaurant opened in the Safeway Kapahulu Center on Nov. 24.

Da Hawaiian Poke Co. offers its own signature poke bowls, the “Aloha Your Way” build-your-own poke bar, as well as plate lunches.

“We focus on quality and good service,” Oyama said, and aim to “share the aloha.” The poke bowls are prepared fresh to order from that day’s catch, harvested, if you will, from the fish auction.

Also, through the rest of this month, sales of its special Jake Shimabukuro poke bowl will result in a donation to the Kalihi Kai Elementary School music program. The restaurant will donate $3 from each order to the program.

The Jake Shimabukuro poke bowl contains spicy ahi with wasabi tobiko (flying fish roe), daikon (radish) sprouts, green onions, kabayaki sauce, bubu arare and shredded nori, in case that entices your philanthropic taste buds.

The top-selling signature bowl, Oyama said, is the Shaka Bowl, which contains spicy ahi poke, poached Maine lobster, wasabi foam and yuzu tobiko, furikake wasabi salmon poke, ikura (salmon roe), uni (sea urchin), daikon sprouts and crisp salmon skin, with a topping of kabayaki sauce. The Shaka Bowl sells for $22, while the Maine lobster poke bowl sells for $18; if it’s just the Maine lobster poke you want, that sells for $36 a pound. In-between prices include a tofu poke bowl for $8, ahi poke bowls for $10 or $13, or $11 or $14 for an “Aloha Your Way” bowl.

If the budget’s a tad anemic, smaller items include fish cake and spicy ahi bombs, which are a sort of poke-and-rice-stuffed cone sushi, starting at $2.

If you want to customize your own bowl, you have a choice of white, brown or sushi-seasoned rice, or, if you’re watching your carbs, you can opt for a base of Waipouli Farms greens with creamy wasabi dressing. The partners wanted to give customers a “healthier alternative,” Oyama said.

Then you choose your poke from either locally caught ahi, fresh Atlantic salmon, Aloha Tofu, shrimp, madako tako or a combination thereof.

You’ll have six flavor choices — Hawaiian, spicy, wasabi, sweet ginger shoyu, Chinese-style ginger negi (green onion) or yuzu ponzu — and then you dive into your choices of 29 toppings “from the sea,” “from the farm,” “from the kitchen” and extra sauces, the menu says. Choices range from Kona ogo to blue crab, inamona (crushed kukui nut) to crispy garlic, edamame to natto (fermented soybeans), and wasabi aioli to yuzu ponzu.

At 720 square feet, the restaurant offers takeout service only right now, but “we will be getting some tables and chairs for outside seating soon,” Oyama said.

Oyama is a 2015 Hawaii Restaurant Association Hall of Fame inductee. He owns Mark’s Place restaurant and Contemporary Flavors Catering in Puhi, Kauai, and also is a culinary instructor at Kauai Community College.

Oyama runs the food aspects of Da Hawaiian Poke Co., given his culinary chops. His resume lists, among others, the Mauna Lani Bay Hotel on Hawaii island, the Black Orchid and the former Bertrand’s restaurant in Greenwich, Conn., a job he got through Alan Wong, he said.

Oyama leased space at Puhi Industrial Park for his catering business, which offers full-service catering for destination weddings and other high-end events, “but we decided to go ahead and do plate lunches … and we got busy,” he said. Oyama will mark 18 years in the spot this summer. Many of the customers at Mark’s Place are workers in the industrial complex, but he also serves many tourists, as word has gotten out about the location, which was challenging for them to find until the advent of navigational apps on smartphones, he said.

One can’t help but remember the success that legendary local chef and restaurateur Sam Choy had operating out of the Kaloko Industrial Park on Hawaii island, years back. In those unassuming, not-fancy environs, a mix of customers, local and visitor alike, enjoyed Choy’s offerings in the early days of the Hawaii Regional Cuisine movement.

Choy is credited with helping to revive the popularity of poke in Hawaii and with spreading awareness of it beyond Hawaii’s shores with his competitive poke festival on the Big Island, which he later also staged on the mainland.

Da Hawaiian Poke Co. partners are scouting locations for expansion and hope to open a second location in Japan by the middle of 2016. The partners feel the time is ripe to show the rest of the world how good poke is, and to share the aloha of enjoying it with family and friends. “We think people will love sharing their combinations with loved ones,” Oyama said.

Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com or on Twitter as @erikaengle.