Chef Sandeep Bhagwat

The results of such kitchen "play" include octopus with fruit and couscous, tuna belly Japanese-style with avocado on rice, and the mouth-watering favorite at our table: tuna on quinoa with harissa, a red-pepper sauce with North African origins. A vegan option includes both firm threads and soft cubes of tofu with sweet potato and rice.

The summer menu theme was inspired by a holiday Wu took in Hawaii.

"We're not trying to duplicate traditional poke exactly," says Bhagwat. "We're adding some ceviche to the summer menu as well.

While poke is not new, the foodie enthusiasm for it seems to have come out of nowhere.

Like cookbook author Cheng, Singaporean sisters Huang Wenyi, 32, and Huang Jiayi, 30, developed a love for poke during family vacations to Hawaii. When they opened Little Catch in 2015 as an accessible imported-seafood retailer, they found that even lots of Westerners in Shanghai had no idea what poke was.

Their "deconstructed sushi in a bowl" was an established hit in 2016, around the same time that pop-up operators like Beijing's The Hatchery were creating poke fans in the capital. Coincidentally, Hawaiian celebrity chef Alan Wong opened his Shanghai restaurant last year, where the raw bar is awash in tempting poke options.

Besides enjoying the flavors of poke on Hawaiian beaches in their youth, the Huang sisters embrace the dish because it's easy to prepare for people like themselves who don't come from a chef's background.