This past Sunday, when I went home to New Orleans, my parents and I tried a new restaurant that opened on Magazine St., called Poke Loa. We were instantly hooked.

Poke Loa’s Instagram surfaced on my explore page recently and since I drool at the pictures they post daily, I have been desperate to try it. One of my parent’s and I's favorite dishes is a Latin American and Caribbean dish called ceviche (fresh raw fish cured in citrus juices), which reminds me a lot of poke. I knew they’d love poke just the same.

Poke is a traditional Hawaiian dish that has existed for hundreds of years. In Hawaii, poke is cubed fish either eaten alone or over sushi rice. Here on the main-land, poke has almost become a craze. Shying away from tradition, poke restaurants in major cities around the country include additional ingredients to their poke other than fish and rice.

At Poke Loa, you can either order a poke bowl listed on the menu (for example: the King Loa Bowl comes with white rice, spring mix, two scoops of salmon, two scoops of tuna, cilantro, cucumbers, tamari, sesame oil, chili paste, crab salad, edamame, seaweed salad, red, orange and wasabi tobiko, sesame seeds, lemon miso and avocado) or you can “build your own” poke bowl in a chipotle/subway type manner.

You can choose either a small or a large bowl; the difference is choosing two or three scoops of protein.

Then, you choose if you want white rice, brown rice or a spring mix. I got brown rice in mine and my parents got the greens instead. I found mine to be very, very filling with the rice (note that I also got a large). My parents did not get rice and they said they did not miss it. Next time, I will do without, just because I was uncomfortably full and couldn’t finish it. However, I want to continue to get the large with the three proteins instead of the two and I have faith that I can finish a large if there is no rice next time.

Next, you choose your proteins, which they portion out with ice cream scoops. The proteins you can choose from are: salmon, tuna, spicy tuna, octopus, white fish and tofu. The three that I chose were octopus, tuna and white fish. Now, if you don’t like raw fish, then you aren’t going to like poke at all. All the proteins added to the poke bowls are raw (though you may like the tofu). The best way to describe it is like a raw sushi bowl.

Last, you choose other toppings. A few (key word "few") options are: cilantro, seaweed salad, crab salad, onion, ginger, edamame, mango, tobiko and a plethora of sauces to select from.

I added seaweed salad, avocado, cilantro, a couple of sauces that looked good and some sriracha to mine. It was amazing.

When I was a junior and senior in high school, I used to always go to a sushi restaurant nearby on Prytania St. called Kyoto. It was there that I was introduced to poke and would always order their mouth-watering poke bowls. Unfortunately, I recently learned that Kyoto shut down. I kid you not, the first thing that I thought was, “Well now where do I get poke from?”

Thanks for giving me another option, Poke Loa!

Go over and check them out if you haven’t already!