Poke Bar - Torrance

I... I don't understand. Somewhere between Torrance and El Segundo, something changed for the much MUCH better. I don't know why and I don't know how, but I've gone from boycotting PokeBar to becoming a legitimate fan.

So far, I've only been to El Segundo and Torrance, and in Torrance they do the poke right. The salmon is fresh, and the tuna is light and lean. The spicy tuna is dense with a dash of sriracha-spice, and even the octopus is in more manageable in edible little niblets. Anything goes with spicy mayo, but the mayo here enhances rather than masks. It's just the right amount of small-burn, and they mix a precise proportion. There are plenty of toppings and veggies to make the poke pop, but I'm a minimalist so just the masago will do. The side of crab salad is fine, the seaweed salad is good, and I haven't tried the pickled cucumbers yet but they look pretty tempting. 

Customized poke with fresh fish in generous scoops, just 2 miles away. Sounds too good to be true, but PokeBar Torrance just made that dream real.

Poke Bar - El Segundo

Right around the launch of the viral, glitchy, well-conceived, horribly-executed Pokemon Go, Poke Bar comes to town.

The poke bowl has a lot of choices, mine a myriad of tuna, scallops, and octopus. Conceptually sound, execution about as disastrous as the constantly-crashing app. The contents of each bowl is a meat-mash that resembles an exploded poke ball... With the Pokemon still inside. The tuna is tasteless, the scallops too. The octopus is chopped into bits the size of ground meat, with the texture of something pre-chewed. Follow that with a random choice of vegetables and a hastily-poured sauce and you really can't taste anything.

There is way more rice than poke and way more salad than anyone would want. They even add seaweed and crab salad at the end, which are nice little sides, but I'd rather have more poke or more quality over quantity.

Society's newfound food allergies, real and imagined, have spawned a virulent strain of make-your-own restaurants, hell-bent on giving everyone the right to make their food as they please. It's worked out well for pizza, but at places like Poke Bar where much of the flavor relies on preparation, it doesn't end well. I wonder how many aspiring Pokemon trainers came here... Only to find that it's not much of a catch.