Spice Alley on Kensington Street has you covered if your only requirement is for a quick Asian meal and not up for venturing to Chinatown. There’s Japanese, Vietnamese, Singaporean, Thai, Malaysian and Cantonese. The variety makes it an ideal spot for catering to different tastes when having lunch with less familiar colleagues. My pick this time is Hoke Poke, a place that offers a rather limited offering of options for the Hawaiian fish salad.
This has a base of 50/50 white rice and salad with crunch from cucumber and edamame, protein in the form of spicy salmon and topped with lime zest yuzu sauce ($11.50).
The poke bowl is fresh with an abundance of vegetables but it’s absolutely ordinary for the price. There’s some sort of spice seasoning on the 10 or so cubes of salmon which is salty but without heat and not moreish in the same umami way of soy sauce. Rather, it’s like seasoning you expect on grilled fish. The lime zest yuzu is the only other remarkable component, although it’s definitely more lime than yuzu.
Hokie Poke is good for people who want something fresh and healthy, but it’s not somewhere I’d return.
Hokie Poke is located at Spice Alley, Kensington Street, Chippendale NSW 2008.