Poke is having a big national moment
right now. What is poke, exactly? It is a
raw fish salad. In the simplest terms, it's
diced sashimi-grade fish that is usually
mixed with some sort of combination of
shoyu, sesame oil, sesame seeds, salt,
pepper, Maui onion, really anything you
could want. And the place we're going to
right now, Alicia's Market, is a
neighborhood institution and it has been
that since the late 1940s. While it is
thought that Alicia's has some of the
best poke a on Oahu, it should be noted
that Alicia's did not invent poke, and
indeed originally did not even have
poke on their menu. Alicia's is owned by a
family of Chinese origin that employed a
Japanese chef who brought the recipe for
poke over. So anyways, we're going to go
over to Alicia's and I'm excited to see
what they have.
Hi I'm Lucas. "I'm Leonard." Nice to meet you.
"Nice to meet you, welcome to Alicia's
Market." Thank you so much. Please tell me
about your establishment. "My mom is
Alicia, she started the business in 1949,
which was a little wooden shack where
the parking lot sits now, and from
then they bought the property here."
You've been here since '69? "Well we've
been here since '49 actually, it's this
property right here." The property, oh yeah.
Now please tell me about some of the
very delicious looking things that you
have the eat. "To start off, first of all,
when my parents started the business, raw
fish wasn't even on the menu. It was just
Chinese-style food: char siu, roast chicken, because that's what my
mother knew how do." So how did that get
incorporated over here? "They just bought
a slab of fish and displayed it for
customers to buy. If the next day that
fish turns color, really you can use it.
My parents hired a Japanese
butcher, okay, and he couldn't see it go
to waste, so he started making poke. So
she was just looking over his shoulder.
When I was a high school boy, it was nice to
go out enjoy some beer, puupuus,
poke, things like that, and I used to go
and try other places and from them I'd try
to conjure—" So you're trying, you
tasted over here and then you'd try to remake
it. "Yeah. My latest is the ponzu salmon
poke, that is my latest." What other
things are popular that you sell? "I'll
tell you, what really put me on the map
is the wasabi masago poke." I am
very much looking forward to trying a
bunch of these different pokes, thanks
for having me! Hey!
How's it going, I'm Lucas, oh I
won't shake your hand.
"What can I get you?" I wanted to
try a few of the popular pokes here, the
wasabi masago, yep, okay
half a pound of that. Let's do half a
pound of the ponzu sweet onion salmon
poke, and maybe a half pound of the
white crab. "Okay gotcha, excellent
choices." Thank you very much.
"Anything else for today?" Oh can I have some banana bread? "Yes, my mom
makes this." I love banana bread, thank
you very much. Guess what? We
came to the beach! There's not seating
inside Alicia's Market so why not take
advantage of the greatest seating of all:
that with Mother Nature. It's a beautiful
day, you've got Diamond Head over here.
I'm gonna enjoy some of this delicious
poke. Contestant number one: this is
the wasabi tobiko ahi poke. Tobiko, as
you may or may not know, is the egg of
a flying fish. They're very tiny, they're
orange, they're really more for texture
than anything else. They still do kind of
pop in your mouth slightly, other than
that this is a nice firm, cold, clean
piece of yellowfin tuna that has been
dressed in a bath of shoyu, sesame
what tastes like a little bit of chili,
and some green onion, and then there's a
little bit spice because there are some
chili peppers in here as well. It's
actually quite simple but it is very
satisfying. There's not a like
overpowering wasabi flavor, but it's
definitely there, that sort of
horseradish like going up the nostrils,
not in an unpleasant way, it's very mild.
Let's move on to the shoyu sweet
onion salmon. Okay there's more chili
flakes in this one, because you can see
from the little red specks. This one
is a little bit spicier, the marinade is
not particularly heavy on soy, a little
more vinegary, a little more tart, and of
course the fish is different. Salmon is a
pretty fatty fish which is great for
things like this because it really adds
to that kind of melting in your mouth
characteristics. And then let's just do
lastly a little bit of this white crab
poke. It goes to show that it doesn't
always have to be fish that you're
making poke with, you can sometimes do
it with raw crab! This one is really cool,
this one is, number one, a heck of a lot
spicier than the other two, but I like
this a lot. I don't know if I've ever had
crab
poke before, I think it's something I'm
gonna have to have more of in the future,
because the meat is so soft and so sweet.
It's been sort of like a totally
different eating experience altogether.
You have to sort of go slower, sort
of take your time, you're going to get
bits of shell in your mouth, you're gonna
have to be digging
crab meat out, which is totally fine
because it is well worth it. The crab
meat has a — not in an unpleasant way — but
a slightly more gelatinous texture than
fish flesh, and it is definitely a little
bit sweeter. Crab poke is definitely
something worth getting. Got a big nice
chunk right here, this actually quite
literally does just sort of melt in your
mouth, so that's really quite nice.
Guess what, as a chaser, there's banana
bread! Jerry, who's Leonard's wife and
Chris' mom, makes it. I love banana bread
and there are a lot of banana bread
snobs out there who will say don't put
nuts in the banana bread, and I say that #$*%.
Nuts go in banana bread! I really hope
you enjoyed this episode of Dining on a
Dime, I enjoyed some poke from Alicia's
Market in Kalihi in Honolulu, Hawaii. If
you'd like to watch more, please click
here.