1st fast-casual poke restaurant set to open in Napa

Oke Poke, a family-owned business that started in Southern California in 2015, plans to expand into Napa this summer.

“There isn’t a fast-casual poke spot similar to us,” said Nate Olaes, the CEO of Oke Poke. “Napa is always a very interesting area.”

The new location, at 3270 California Blvd., will be Oke Poke’s fourth in California but the first to be franchised.

Olaes acknowledges the lack of ethnic food in Napa but said, “a lot of people love sushi. If you love sushi, you love poke. I haven’t met a single person who likes sushi but not poke.”

He and his wife, Anna, own Oke Poke, and the Napa location will be franchised by locals Jill and James Barrett, who Olaes said is a “customer turned franchisee.”

Oke Poke came on the scene when Anna’s parents opened the first location in Chino Hills outside Los Angeles.

“It was (about) the love of Hawaiian culture and food,” Olaes said.

At the time he was about to graduate college with a major in business and wanted to get into franchising. He was dating Anna, and “poke was really hot,” he said.

Olaes moved to Walnut Creek in 2016 and found a good spot for the next Oke Poke. “I had been saving for a while for this opportunity,” he said.

He opened a location there and it has since become, according to Olaes, the “premier poke spot in the East Bay.”

But he had bigger plans for the business. He bought the company from his in-laws in 2023.

“I thought it was time to grow it,” he said. “We’ve stayed true to what we’ve been. We haven’t changed since 2015. We prioritize the customer experience.”

Customers, he said, are often regulars coming in multiple times a week for “a healthy and relatively affordable meal.”

Oke Poke has a fast-casual ordering model similar to that of Chipotle. Customers choose the size of a bowl or poke burrito. Then, the base — rice, salad or noodles. That’s followed by popular toppings, like pineapple, edamame, jalapeno or ginger.

Next up is the choice of protein, which includes raw fish, like ahi and yellowtail, or cooked items like shrimp.

“We get our fish delivered daily. Some from Japan, some from Norway. We are always looking for vendors, but we are very selective about who we get it from,” Olaes said.

The next step is choosing from a range of homemade sauces, including miso, spicy or sesame. Olaes calls it their specialty.

Finally, top it off with toppings, such as seeds, crunchy onion or fried garlic. There’s also miso soups and various popular Hawaiian desserts.

The menu honors the essence of Hawaiian tradition, but Olaes said they are not traditional poke but “new age California style” that should satisfy both traditionalists and adventurous palates. Their build-your-own poke bowls and “pokerritos” serve as a canvas for culinary exploration.

The new Oke Poke spot is set to open in Napa at the end of June, Olaes said.

“Every time we run into friends around town, they ask us when we will be open, so there seems to be a lot of interest and excitement in the community about Oke Poke,” Jill Barrett said. “James and I both worked in the restaurant industry when we were younger and always enjoyed it.”

In addition to its locations on Grand Avenue in Chino Hills and Locust Street in Walnut Creek, there’s also a location on Morris Street in San Francisco.