Huntington Beach’s North Shore Poke Company is coming to Costa Mesa. It’ll be another face in the crowded strip mall on Bristol that recently added Creamistry, Capital Noodle, and, of course, Halal Guys as tenants. But wait, before you roll your eyes that it’s just another poke joint, you should know that North Shore Poke Company was doing poke in OC before everyone else. It predates even Pokinometry.
You should also know that Shawn Gole’s North Shore Poke Company is not an assembly line poke restaurant. At the original store in Huntington Beach, which he opened with his dad and sister in 2012, Gole mixed the poke together like a garde manger operating on overdrive, spooning out cubed raw ahi from a chilled trough and tossing it with sauces and vegetables as soon as he gets an order. He produces five distinct flavors and packs them up with rice in clamshell containers.
The Costa Mesa store will be North Shore’s third restaurant after its Cerritos branch. And when it does open, it will be next to Duke Bakery, and across from the street from Uroko Cafe, which, yes, also serves poke.
