Po-ke owners Cindy and David Nguyen were on vacation in Venice Beach when Cindy took off to get a bite to eat. Cindy came across a little eatery called Poke Poke, specializing in Hawaiian-Japanese fusion poke bowls. Cindy thought she was only waiting in the restaurant line for 10 or 15 minutes, but she was gone much longer. After an hour had passed, David went to find his wife. "He was worried sick and went looking for me and then he came back and I was holding this bright, colourful bowl of poke,” Cindy says.
At the time, the couple was planning to launch a restaurant venture in Calgary, and poke seemed like an obvious choice. “The way that Calgary is, we’re really health-conscious. We like to watch what we eat. So we incorporated more of the Western style with Japanese flavours,” Cindy says.
