Where to eat poke on the Big Island

Poke is cubed raw fish, usually ahi, seasoned and eaten cold. On the Big Island it is a lunch, not a special occasion. The best of it is sold by the pound from a counter, and a lot of the famous “restaurant poke” is just that same counter with a higher rent.

Kona: Da Poke Shack

Da Poke Shack sits in the Kona Bali Kai complex on Aliʻi Drive, at 76-6246 Aliʻi Drive. It is takeout: a few shared tables outside, and otherwise you walk the bowl down to the seawall.

They use locally caught ahi and they do not sell yesterday’s fish. The shop opens at 10 a.m. and often sells out in the afternoon, so the useful plan is to go when they open. Order the shoyu ahi if you want the baseline, or the Shack Special if you want it a little sweeter. Spicy is there if you want it; it is not automatically better. Seaweed salad on the side is worth it.

If the line is long at 10:15, that is the system working, not a reason to leave.

Stay on this side of the island if this is the lunch you keep coming back to. Places to stay in Kailua-Kona put you a few minutes from Aliʻi Drive, which is also where the sunset mai tai lives.

Hilo: Suisan Fish Market

Suisan is on the bayfront, at 93 Lihiwai Street, next to the water and the banyan trees of Liliʻuokalani Park. This is a working fish market. The poke counter is the reason to stop: shoyu ahi, a few other seasonings, rice if you want a bowl. Go earlier rather than later. Ambiance is fluorescent lights and a parking lot, which is how you know you are in the right place.

Wednesday and Saturday mornings, the Hilo Farmers Market a few blocks away has poke among the fruit. Same rule: earlier is better, and you eat it the day you buy it.

Hilo is the right base if the volcano and this side of the island are the trip. Places to stay in Hilo put Suisan, the market and Kula Shave Ice in the same morning.

The poke locals actually buy

KTA Super Stores (there is one on each side of the island) and Foodland sell poke by the pound that residents pick up on the way home. If a guide skips this because it is a supermarket, the guide is performing. Shoyu ahi from a busy counter, eaten the same day, is the honest version of the dish.

Skip anything that has been sitting, and skip the impulse to “save it for dinner tomorrow.” Poke is a today food.

How to order the first time

• Shoyu is soy, sesame, a little onion. Start here.
• Spicy usually means a mayo-based sauce. Fine, just know you are tasting the sauce.
• Ahi is yellowfin. Limu is seaweed. Tako is octopus.
• A bowl with rice is lunch. A pound with nothing else is for the beach, if you have a cooler or you are eating it now.

Where I’d sleep

If the food day is…	Sleep in
Da Poke Shack, beaches, a Kona sunset	Kailua-Kona
Suisan, the market, the volcano the next morning	Hilo or Volcano

With five nights or more I still split the stay. The reasoning is in Kona or Hilo, and a full week is mapped in the 7-day itinerary.

If you would rather have someone else choose the counters and drive, a Kona food tour covers that. I would still go to Da Poke Shack on my own at 10 a.m.

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