Published by Jeremy. Last Updated on August 21, 2024.
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Oakland is becoming a hub of excellent fast casual dining for the large college student, hospital, and office crowd in the neighborhood, and we’re always finding new gems on every visit.
JJ Poke Bowl is one such restaurant and focuses on all things poke and Taiwanese bubble tea with large portions, great flavor, and, perhaps best of all, a rather attractive price point!
So if you’re looking to feast on seafood for less, don’t overlook this great little restaurant right in the heart of Oakland!
JJ Poke Offers Delicious Bowls for Less
The menu at JJ Poke Bowl is broken up into four distinct sections- signature bowls, build-your-own bowls, specialty bento boxes, and bubble tea. For our first visit, we decided to stick with the signature bowl and bubble tea side of the menu to get an idea of what flavor combinations the restaurant likes to create.
We placed our order for takeout, and were surprised with just how quickly JJ Poke Bowl got our orders ready at the start of the day despite a steady flow of customers. So we jumped in the car and made our way back home to enjoy a seafood feast.
Our two bowls, the Aloha Classic and Rainbow Love, were, in a word, massive. They both offered enough of a feast for one large lunch, or could easily have been split into two meals if eating light (especially with enjoying a bowl of miso soup that was also included within the price).
The Aloha Classic contained a selection of ahi tuna, spicy tuna, onion, cucumber, corn, seaweed salad, avocado, nori, and soy sauce while the Rainbow Love was a mix of ahi tuna, salmon, onion, seaweed, edamame, pineapple, masago, sesame seed, and ponzu sauce. Both of these offered a robust mound of fish with some beautiful balance of flavors from all of the toppings (the pineapple on the Rainbow Love offered some great tanginess, too!).
The one interesting point to note here was that it seemed like the sauce on both bowls was added on top of the rice before all of the fish and toppings. Our first few bites felt like the bowl was lacking a nice hit from the soy sauce or ponzu, and it wasn’t until we got deeper into the bowl that we started to notice a flavor pop. As such, if you’re not in the habit of mixing up your poke bowl before eating it, you may want to consider it here if yours was prepped the same as ours- the sauce really kicks everything up a notch.
While ordering at the counter at JJ Poke, the prepared baby octopus salad also caught my eye and I added that onto the meal. This one featured roughly six baby octopus in a tangy slaw which made for a nice complement to the poke bowls themselves (although since we were already fairly stuffed eating the entire bowls in one sitting, may have also been a bit overkill).
The bubble tea side of the menu also should not be overlooked. JJ Poke has a modest selection of signature drinks, but also has the option to create your own as well. We opted for the latter and went with a mix of Assam black tea base, passion fruit, and mango boba for a tropical explosion that disappeared just as quickly as the food.
Overall, there really is a lot to love about JJ Poke Bowl in Oakland. From the massive portions to the reasonable prices and speed at which our order was made, we have many reasons to return to this one again and again!
JJ Poke Bowl is located at 110 Atwood Street in Oakland.
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