Publications can't even agree on the translation of the word 'poke,' with variations that include 'something cut away,' 'cut into pieces,' 'to slice or cut,' or simply 'chunk.' For a dish that has become so ubiquitous, it's fair to say there's a hazy section in its timeline. It's not clear when people went from simply seasoning poke fish to marinating it as is now commonplace. Nobody seems to know who started calling the dish 'poke' or when. Poke - in Hawaiian, meaning to section, slice or cut - are chunks of raw fish cut into cubes and then marinated.

Another proposed theory is that the popularity was aided by advanced deep-sea fishing techniques that led to ahi tuna being even more widely available.īut at this point, theories appear to be all we have. Aloha Come take a trip to Hawaii right here in the Long Beach neighborhood.

The final two waves correspond to the accepted period of when poke's rise began. In this article, we provide a few reasons to skip fatty foods and try one of the best poke bowls in Clearwater Beach. Why did this growth happen? One theory is that it was spurred by the migration of Hawaiians to the mainland. There were three major 20 th-century migration waves: one after World War II, one after Hawaii became a state in 1959, and one in the 1970s due to the increased cost of living on the islands.