I blogged about how there were two restaurants that served poke bowls in Hanford, California. I reviewed the first restaurant last week and for this week, I will review the second, 201 Kitchen.
Before I go into this review, I have eaten a poke bowl in different parts of the world and with every experience, it’s always a different experience.
You have your more elaborate restaurants that go as far as making sure plating is beautiful and then you have your smaller locations, some that give you more for the value and some just gives you the convenience of eating poke in a small area.
201 Kitchen is the latter. A restaurant frequented for poke and also for boba.
Where the other location showcases a Hawaii style aesthetics, 201 Kitchen has New York photos.
When you go in, you can choose your signature poke bowl, cooked versions, build your own bowl and many varieties of boba drinks. They also sell Thai iced tea and if you just want water, they have water station with lemon and cucumber.
I went for the spicy salmon poke bowl and Angela went for the ranch chicken sushi bowl with Asian vinagrette. Unfortunately, they ran out of leafy salad, which she was hoping for.
Both places are comparable with their poke bowl at $12.99 and for the most part, I enjoyed my poke bowl.
Although, Angela was hoping for her standard chicken salad, she wasn’t prepared for the wasabi-taste (which wasn’t to her liking) but for me, I enjoyed the spicy salmon poke bowl. Good portions and for the most part, I was content. No fishy smell and the salmon tasted great!
No wooden bowls or china like metro restaurants, similar to the other location, they serve the food in plastic bowls which one can eat in or order take out.
I did feel the “large” bowl-size was slightly smaller than the other local competitor’s “large” bowl size but it’s still a few dollars cheaper than other locations I have eaten.
The location is clean and where I quizzed the last restaurant to see which they recommended in terms of sauce recommendations (and she was on point, when it came to recommendations), this location was more about the ingredients than the sauces and the two teenager workers behind the counter seemed a bit young for me to ask for their recommendations, so I didn’t really ask any questions.
But my feeling about visiting 201 Kitchen is that it’s great that Hanford has restaurants that serves poke bowl, especially one that sells boba drinks. It’s great to have this located to the new Costco retail area.
And for the price, while some may see it as pricey, it’s actually a little cheaper than what you would get at a metropolitan city.
So, if you are near the area, definitely give 201 Kitchen a try!
