Pokey Okey: Hawaiian poke bowls in Burnaby, Richmond and Vancouver
Pokey Okey is a poke restaurant with 3 locations in Burnaby, Richmond and Vancouver. They offer a selection of Hawaiian-inspired poke bowls with a build-your-own option and lots of vegetarian and vegan options.
I was invited to come check out some of their new winter and non-poke menu items. Here is everything I got to try!
The vibe
We visited the Burnaby location on Kingsway, which is just a quick few minute walk to Metrotown Mall.
It is a small restaurant but they do have in-dining seats available on the left side of the restaurant, lining the bar. The interior is very colourful and pink (I love pink!) with a fun chalk board menu that lists out their signature bowls (everything inside is pre-selected).
If you choose to build your own bowl, you can walk along the bar and choose exactly what to put into your bowl (kind of like a cafeteria/Subway/Chipotle way of ordering).
Food and drinks review
This is their regular menu, but we were invited to specifically taste their new menu items, which include:
- Chunky Curry Udon
- Aburi Bowl
- Beefy Bowl
- 2 Musubis
- 2 Drinks of Choice
Musubi + 2 drinks
They could only give us 1 musubi because they didn’t have enough to make 2, so I shared the musubi with my partner. It was a pretty hefty size – much bigger than the ones we got at the ABC Mart in Hawaii. My partner is a big fan of musubi actually so he was really excited to eat it. We both really liked the tamago/egg! I prefer my spam more crispy/cooked.
For drinks, we chose a guava juice and a sparkling yuzu drink. Both were fruity and refreshing but I did prefer the guava juice over the yuzu since the yuzu started tasting quite sour near the end. Also the yuzu drink was $6 😦 which is just too expensive for me for a bottled beverage.
Chunky curry udon
The first bowl we tried is the curry beef udon. They use a blend of pork curry with udon noodles and top it off with an onsen egg (Japanese low temperature boiled egg).
I quite liked the way they presented the noodles where the sauce is only half of the bowl. You can break the egg (so satisfying) and mix up that curry sauce with all the noodles before you eat it.
I liked the curry sauce – it is Japanese style so on the sweeter side. With the udon noodles, it is a pretty good combo. I found that there are also some mushrooms in it, as well as chunks of beef. The beef wasn’t as tender as it looked. The egg was perfect!
Aburi bowl
Another new item is their aburi bowl. It comes with torched aburi salmon and tuna with pickled jalapenos and some microgreens. Regular price for this bowl is around $21.
I love aburi sushi so I was pretty excited for this bowl. The salmon was very good – nice and fatty and tasted great with the sauces and the mayo. The tuna was chopped into little cubes, but also tasted quite nice with the sauces.
Beefy bowl
I saw that the beefy bowl is on their regular menu for $14 (small size). In our photo, I believe it is medium size so + another $3-4.
This hearty bowl has braised beef, green onions, pickled ginger, seaweed flakes, onsen egg and rice.
We both really liked the beefy bowl because of the sweet sauce the beef is braised in – so delicious! It tasted great with the onions and the onsen egg and rice. I also found this bowl to be very filling and comforting.
Final thoughts
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
We were very full from the 3 bowls we tried at Pokey Okey. Out of all 3, we liked the beefy bowl the best! Highly recommend it if you are looking for something that is not poke/raw or something that will warm you up.
I also really liked the aburi bowl – I recommend for anyone who is into salmon aburi sushi. Think of that in a bowl form with more rice/more filling.
I was pretty surprised during my time at Pokey Okey because there were a lot of orders coming in from food delivery apps! I understand that the restaurant itself is not very big and can only fit tables of 2 so I do think takeout or pickup is the way to go.
If you are looking for something healthy and filling, check out a Pokey Okey location near you!
Disclaimer: Everything we tried in this review was given to us for free.
Sincerely, Loewe