Poke Bar

It’s not very often that I am intrigued by something but the new self-heating bowl from Poke Bar had me curious. Grayson and I have been to our share of poke spots but have yet to try out Poke Bar. We visited the location along Lonsdale in North Vancouver.

The restaurant was brightly lit when we entered and we were greeted by the friendly staff. Poke Bar offers your typical poke bowl options and toppings. What intrigued me was that they expanded to serving ramen too.

All the poke toppings were nicely refrigerated and neatly placed by the food prep station. I like that they had scoops for each of the bins so that they had the same portion for each bowl.

Aloha ramen

The two of us tried the aloha ramen because it was made in their self heating bowl. The bowl came in a plastic container and our server added cold water to the spout of the bowl. Within a few seconds, our bowl started steaming! It was like magic.

We had to wait 7-8 minutes until our ramen was ready to eat and wow were we surprised by what hid beneath the lid. There were 2 pieces of grilled pork belly, half an egg, corn, bean sprouts, green onions, and garlic chips. This ramen bowl was advertised as a tonkotsu ramen but it did not taste that way at all. The broth reminded me of the chicken soup from instant cup ramen. It was also very salty and made the ramen almost inedible for us.

The ramen noodles were not your traditional chewy ramen noodle. They were on the softer side and resembled Chinese oil noodles. Perhaps they were al dente when they were put into the bowl but after the re-heating, they became a little softer than I would have liked.

After the meal, I was curious to see what made the bowl self-heat. Turns out it is this little pack. I’m guessing it’s a water activated hot pack that heats up when in contact with water. This then causes the water to boil and create steam to heat up your bowl of ramen. This was definitely a gimmicky experience and I would love to see this self-heating bowl at other spots because it kept our noodles nice and hot. Unfortunately, we weren’t fans of the ramen it self and won’t be back for ramen.