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That’s why Brittany Walshaw, a Reno native who has returned after a decade in Las Vegas and the Bay Area, just opened Pola Poke Bowls on Oct. 27.

The restaurant — in the West Plumb Lane space that previously housed BFF Cafe and Emerald City Cafe — serves house bowls and build-your-own bowls inspired by poke (PO-kay), the classic Hawaiian salad of raw fish. Pola is the Hawaiian word for bowl.

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POLA POKE BOWLS

Address: 3594 W. Plumb Lane, at South McCarran Boulevard

Phone: 775-683-9901

Hours: 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily

On the web: Visit here

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“I fell in love with poke when I lived in Las Vegas and the Bay Area,” said Walshaw, 32, “and I always wanted to come back to Reno and start a small business. Not only is poke one of my favorite foods to eat, but this concept was something I felt I could handle and put together.”

The restaurant also offers drinks made with coffee from local Stone Mother roasters and four bowls anchored by açai berries, a South American fruit said to have anti-againg properties.

Choose your protein

Pola Poke Bowl opens as Reno continues to do its bit for the mainland poke craze of the past several years.

Earlier this year, Poke King set up shop in Northwest Reno, while Finbomb Sushi Burrito & Poke Bar arrived in Midtown. Bluefin Poke, meanwhile, is going into the old Le Crêpe Café on South Virginia Street — and all over town, even restaurants not devoted to poke offer appetizer versions of the dish.

At Pola Poke, folks assemble their bowls by choosing a base (greens or rice), a protein (tuna and five others), a sauce (eight total), and toppings that range from corn to pickled ginger to crunchy garlic bits in spicy chili oil.

“It’s the most delicious thing,” Walshaw said. “I feel like it’s our secret ingredient.”

Test kitchen

The menu also includes five house bowls mixed to order.

The aloha bowl mingles white rice, tuna, scallions, pineapple, sesame shoyu and other ingredients. Chicken bulks up an otherside bowl — the other side being the reason the chicken crossed the road — “because not everyone likes raw fish,” Walshaw said.

Mixed greens, white rice, tuna, salmon, spicy crab, edamame, seaweed salad, cucumber, scallions, a ponzu of pineapple and togarashi spices, and a finishing flurry of coconut star in the vacation bowl.

“We did a little test kitchen at my house with my family and friends, and these were the most popular ingredients,” Walshaw said. “We added everything to the aloha bowl that people liked the most.”

Poke bowls can be ordered ahead online or at the restaurant for sit-down dining or take-out (coffee and açai bowls only can be ordered in house). Delivery of poke bowls will begin soon, Walshaw said.

“It being raw fish, we’re doing our own delivery. The fish needs to be fresh, the rice needs to be warm, what’s chilled needs to stay cool. We want delivery customers to have the same experience as if they came to the restaurant.”

Vintage menus

Re-use is part of the Pola Poke Bowls model. To-go containers are compostable or biodegradeable, Walshaw said. Business cards for the restaurant are made using cotton waste from T-shirt manufacturing. Menus can be checked to indicate ingredients for build-your-own bowls, then wiped and used again.

A tropical spirit informs more than the poke bowl. The dining room features  a carved Hawaiian tiki mask, rattan chairs, bamboo fixtures and potted palms.

Walshaw also is planning to display Hawaiian memorabilia like a pineapple plantation map, airmail Clippergrams sent back home by tourists, and vintage menus from Hawaiian cruises.

No word yet on whether those menus offered poke.

Johnathan L. Wright is the food and drink editor of RGJ Media. Join @RGJTaste on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. You also can subscribe here to The Reno Taste, a free food and drink newsletter delivered weekly to your inbox.

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My dining companions and I were each warmly greeted and handed a two-sided, laminated menu with dry erase marker. One side lists a collection of specialty poke bowls ($12.95), and fruit and granola acai bowls ($8.95). Flip it over, and you have a “build your own bowl” list of ingredients divided by category, each with a handy checkbox to mark your selections. This made ordering much more efficient, kept the line moving, and had the bonus of zero paper waste—great idea.

If building your own bowl, you’ll start with a base of brown rice, white rice, kale, mixed greens or a combination of these. Next, you’ll select your proteins from a choice of blue crab, chicken, octopus, salmon, tuna or spicy tuna. A two scoop bowl is $11.95, three scoops is $14.95—mix or match. Sauces include chili garlic, creamy togarashi, pineapple-citrus-ponzu, sesame shoyu, teriyaki and wasabi sesame shoyu; you can have the lot if you’re into culinary chaos.

A pretty big list of unlimited add-ons includes carrot, corn, spicy shredded krab, cucumber, shelled edamame, fresh jalapeno, masago and more. Avocado and mango are each $1 extra. Finish it off with crunchy toppings such as flaked coconut, crispy garlic, crispy onion or nori flakes. Now you can see why the checkbox menu is so great for the task at hand.

I opted for the “superfood” bowl ($12.95), which starts with kale and brown rice topped with sesame shoyu, cucumber, sesame seed, scallion, onion, avocado, edamame, ginger, seaweed salad, furikake and seaweed flake. It normally comes with a couple of scoops of salmon, but I paid a couple of extra bucks and got a mix of that plus octopus and blue crab, as well as some spicy krab with the toppings. Everything tasted fresh. The lump crab was sweet, and the octopus wasn’t chewy. It was a completely enjoyable bowl of healthy food.

The adult kids built their own two-scoop bowls and shared with my grandson. I’m convinced that adventurous toddler will eat just about anything, especially if you tell him it’s “dinosaurs.” My son and daughter-in-law each got bowls of brown rice, hers topped with blue crab, salmon, sesame shoyu, teriyaki, krab, cucumber, red bell pepper, seaweed salad, pineapple, crispy garlic and sesame seed. The other was dressed with blue crab, octopus, pineapple-citrus ponzu sauce, carrot, krab, cucumber, edamame, masago, red bell pepper, scallion, seaweed salad, pineapple and every single crunchy topping. Just call my son “Captain Chaos.”

My more reserved daughter chose kale with blue crab, spicy tuna, spicy krab, masago, scallion, shaved red onion, dried seaweed and no sauce in the bowl—but a little sesame on the side. Everyone enjoyed their selections, with plans discussed for a return breakfast visit to try acai bowls with mugs of locally roasted coffee.

Our pleasant evening was capped with a complimentary dessert bowl, provided for kids under 13 ($3 otherwise). The youngster loved his scoop of tartly sweet acai sorbet with sliced banana and granola, and he even let his gramps have a taste.

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