Grab a streetside window table for excellent people-watching onto a fast-evolving end of Capel Street or choose a bar stool perch to be part of the seafood bar fun at Klaw Poke. As the name suggests, this two-in-one casual eatery combines a second outpost for Niall Sabongi’s justifiably popular seafood bar, Klaw, with what is Dublin’s first Hawaiin restaurant specialising in customisable poke bowls.
Pronounced ‘poe-kay’, this seasoned raw fish dish is a relation of both Peruvian ceviche and Japanese sushi, and is one of the latest Instagram-fueled food crazes to have taken hold. Its pairing of raw sushi-grade tuna, salmon or variations with fresh, colourful and healthy ingredients like edamame (green soy beans), pickled ginger and seaweed make it as photogenic as it is wholesome and just what millenials want to eat today as an alternative to build-your-own protein bowls.
Featherblade on Dawson Street was an early adaptor, serving poke as a light salad starter as they do in Hawaii. But at Sabongi’s Capel Street eatery, the poke bowl is the order of the day: bulked out to wholesome-meal-in-a-bowl status with a base of rice, quinoa, noodles or leaves and made to order to ensure maximum freshness and accommodate personal ‘free-from’ preferences.
Choose between Hawaiian classics such as the Ahi Poke (cubed yellow fin tuna in a citrusy ponzu and chilli dressing with wakame seaweed and sunomono-pickled cucumber) or house specialities such as the punchy Octo Poke bowl (grilled octopus with salted pineapple and coriander) or build your own bowl from proteins like crab, shrimp, lobster or tofu, sauces like namjim or sriracha and toppings like kimchi or samphire.
Alternatively you can opt for the Crab Shack fare, as offered in Klaw in Temple Bar. Think excellent Irish and international shellfish, including one of the best selections of Irish oysters that you’ll find in the city, but all served in the most casual and fun-loving style with an emphasis on rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty.
The spirit of Sabongi’s seafood wholesale business, Sustainable Seafood Ireland, is reflected in some unusual menu items such as ray back – the inner spine and meaty flesh of ray, a local, plentiful and once very traditional fish – served with a rough salsa of caperberries, samphire, edamame, coriander, shallot and tomato.
A short dessert menu includes an acai bowl, a surfer’s favourite of frozen smoothie featuring nutrient-rich acai berries topped with fresh fruit. The drinks menu reflects this marriage of Hawaiin and local influences, with a choice of Hawaiian Longboard lager or Sabongi’s own Finglas-brewed IPA and lager, alongside Klaw favourites such as their excellent Bloody Mary menu.
The stripped-back space riffs on many of the elements of the original Klaw with a vaguely nautical-themed decor with blackboard menu, kitchen roll in place of linen, bare wood bar tops adorned with nothing but essentials like Old Bay seasoning and Tabasco sauce.
A great destination in a buzzy part of the city – and yet more proof that Sabongi remains one to watch as he rolls out his plans to revolutionise our relationship with the superlative seafood bounty that our shores have to offer.
