Toronto says aloha to Big Tuna’s poké
A spin on a Hawaiian dish offers the city’s food lovers a new way to eat raw fish
With sushi, ceviche, chirashi and tartare on countless menus around town, we’ve been eating variants of this dish for quite some time.
So it’s a wonder why “poké,” which quite literally means to “chop” but is synonymous with a Hawaiian style raw fish salad, has only just touched down in Toronto.
For instance, Big Tuna Poké Bar at 599 Bloor St. W. opened a few weeks ago
“It’s just a new way to have fresh fish,” says Big Tuna owner Anh Tran.
That “new way” is dicing sushigrade fish, such as tuna and salmon, smothering it in ponzu sauce or, say, a kicky spiced mayo, and tossing it over rice and veggies. Then it all gets dressed up with sesame seeds or salty nori matchsticks or, really, anything at all.
That’s the modus operandi at Big Tuna Poké Bar, tucked into a tiny and now very Zen space just west of Mirvish Village. There’s a Mexicantinged “El Guapo” poké, with salsa verde. And a tofu version. Tran, 26, is committed, he says, to making pokés that taste great — even if they’re not “authentic.” Since Toronto is not Hawaii, the dish must evolve to fit the place, the people and the available ingredients, he says.
For instance, certain nuts that grow wild across Hawaii, such as kukui nuts, Tran says, and used widely in poké, are hard to come by locally. So to add crunch to his poke bowls, Tran employs crushed macadamia nuts.
“At the end of the day, you can cook whatever you want,” he says. “You just want it to be undeniably good. That’s all that matters.”
So far, customers are digging it — about 200 of them a day.
In the few weeks Big Tuna’s been open, a skeleton staff have sliced, diced and sold about 20 to 40 pounds each of tuna and salmon each day (a large poke bowl is $12.95), Tran says.
All of the toppings and sides, such as taro chips and pickled daikon and cabbage, are made in house. And they’re from all-Vietnamese recipes, Tran says, because that’s his heritage.
The son of “Vietnamese boat people,” who, he says, immigrated to Canada in 1989 to give their children a better life, Tran, who was around 3 at the time, was always expected to help out around the house. That included cooking — especially fish, which the family caught while urban fishing.
As a youngster, Tran watched his dad break down the catch, he says, and by the age of 8 was doing it himself. His dad “would give me a few knives” and put him to work, he says with a smile (his love of fish runs so deep, his tattoo-artist girlfriend emblazoned a fish hook tattoo on his right wrist as a present).
Tran’s competence in the kitchen led to a bevy of jobs in the restaurant industry and a deep love of eating. He first came across poké at a worldly and well-travelled friend’s house a couple of years ago, he says.
That was his “aha” moment. “Ev- erything just came together and made this beautiful thing,” he says. “You’ve had fish hundreds of different ways, and for you to To have fish some new way and (for it to be) so different, it’s life-changing.”
Though he’s not Hawaiian and has never visited any of the Pacific islands, opening a poké restaurant “felt right,” he says, noting that legendary chef David Chang is Korean American and cooks Japanese noodles. “As long as you let the food speak for itself, that’s what really matters.” It does and it does. Big Tuna’s poke bowls are filled with fresh ingredients — perfectly cooked, hot, white sushi rice (there’s brown too); plump and delicate cubes of raw fish and crunchy veggies. The Big Katuna bowl is tossed in homemade ponzu. The Ninja is smothered in spicy mayo. For me, both these bowls were love at first bite — light and bright, each was the perfect fusion of protein, complex carbs and taste.