Poke Bowl - Paina Cafe

Okay, so I dug into it before I took a proper picture. Sorry, I was hungry. This is one of our "famous" poke bowls from Paina Cafe. This is the large size (I usually get the small, but hello, hungry!). Here's the scoops for ordering your bowl:


1) Size (small, large, extra large)
2) Type of rice (white or brown)
3) Type of shoyu sauce (mild or hot)
4) Nori, furikake or none (your free topping)
5) Type of poke
6) Any additional toppings


My bowl is a:
1) large
2) brown
3) hot shoyu sauce
4) nori
5) half spicy ahi poke, half wasabi masago poke
6) pickled onions, seaweed salad


I've made a few posts about this before, so apologies for the repeat, but I'm not going to be totally cruel to my G+ family and make them read all the old posts. Yet. Quiz later, peeps.


Shoyu is Japanese for soy sauce. We put a special blend of soy sauce and spices to drizzle on the rice, it makes it super nom. If you wonder what it is, that's what it is. Nori is dried seaweed with a little salty taste, it's crunchy but as soon as it hits moisture, it limpy-fies; these are the thin black strips that you see scattered on top of the fish. Furikake is a nori sesame seed blend, tinier flakes of nori. Other toppings are pickled onions (sweet, vinegary onion-y goodness), taegu (Korean spicy cuttlefish or cod), kim chee (pickled aged spicy cabbage), takuan (Japanese pickled radish), kyuri-zuke (Japanese pickled cucumbers), green onions and super antioxidant topping called yamakake style (_yama imo_ a Japanese yam that's ground until it's a paste like texture, nori and green onions). I've tried everything except the yamakake style. It's a texture thing for me.


Poke (sounds like poh-kay, not poke like that thing in Faceb**k, or pokey like a cactus) is a blend of raw tuna (ahi), sesame oil, onions and other seasonings. We have a few different types of poke that we serve daily: shoyu ahi, hot shoyu ahi, spicy ahi, hawaiian poke (with limu fresh seaweed, crunchy bits of ocean-y goodness), wasabi masago (wasabi flavor with masago - tiny fish eggs) and other specials that rotate throughout the week.