Editor’s note: Nosh is dedicated to exploring the full diversity of restaurants and foods found across the East Bay. With that in mind, welcome to a new series in which we highlight a favorite dish from a restaurant we return to again and again.
Home cooks know Tokyo Fish Market as a destination for seafood. And, for years, I’ve stopped by any time I’ve been near the Northwest Berkeley shop for its treasure trove of grab-and-go Japanese specialties: rolls and onigiri from the restaurant Musashi, plus sashimi, side dishes and desserts.
A few months ago, I peered into an unremarkable cooler near the front of the store and, for the first time, spotted tubs of the market’s stellar house-made poke practically hidden in the back. Now, it’s my regular order.
Tokyo Fish sells four varieties – tuna or hamachi, tossed in a shoyu or spicy marinade – by the pound or loaded into a poke bowl accompanied by rice, two types of seaweed and kinpira gobo, a salad of burdock root and carrot. For this bowl, I opted for shoyu hamachi and spicy tuna, in which the mellow and lingering heat doesn’t overpower the fish. You really can’t go wrong, though.
Compared to what a lot of poke shops serve up, this is a simple bowl – you won’t find any edamame, avocado or wasabi here (which is more akin to how it’s done in poke’s birthplace, Hawaii). But everything in it plays together perfectly, especially the hijinki, a seaweed that resembles black tea and provides a briny note that makes the fish taste even fresher.
Poke’s spread from the strip malls and grocery stores of the Aloha State to the strip malls and grocery stores of the mainland has meant most bowls of the dish I’ve eaten have been forgettably fine. In this part of the Pacific, poke can feel too often like a compromise – a healthy-seeming way to fill up on protein, where the condiments and toppings matter more than the fish.
Tokyo Fish Market reminds you how great poke can be.
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AloJapan.com