Poke News
Savvy Dallas restaurant team opens sleek poke restaurant on Fitzhugh
There's new poke place in town from a team that includes two of Dallas' most experienced restaurant players. Called Mamasan House of Poke, it's now softly open at 2818 N. Fitzhugh Ave., a former bank building just a block or so east of US-75.
According to a representative from the restaurant, it opened on June 27.
The folks behind Mamasan include Royce Ring, the ex-Carlson Restaurants VP, and Alex Urrunaga, who've had a hand in the creation and design of hundreds of concepts from Bolsa to the Statler Dallas hotel to Legacy Hall. If it's clean and smartly designed, they've probably been involved in some way.
At Mamasan, they cleverly combine poke — the super-trendy raw fish dish from Hawaii — with bowls and burrito-style "sushirrito" sushi rolls centered around items like shrimp tempura and Japanese short rib.
The menu is intuitively modular, with categories such as seafood, chicken, beef, and veggie. You choose an item such as chicken karaage, the crispy fried chicken dish of Japanese origin, which you can get either as a roll or else in a bowl with rice, adzuki beans, Asian greens, quinoa, and sesame-ginger dressing.
Options include ahi tuna, shrimp tempura, Japanese short rib, and skirt steak. There are two vegetarian offerings: ginger-miso yam and eggplant, or vindaloo jackfruit, an Asian fruit whose tender strips has made it a popular stand-in for pulled pork.
A "poke party" category lets you order poke in bulk, from a choice of ahi tuna, yellow fin tuna, or salmon, ranging from $15-$22 a pound.
Starters and shared dishes include tempura green beans with spicy mayo, shishito peppers, and ahi poke nachos served on wonton chips instead of tortilla chips.
They have fruity teas such as mango and jasmine green; beer on tap; and a tropical frozen cocktail with rum, vodka, ginger, pineapple juice, coconut milk, yuzu, colada mix, and orgeat syrup.
True to form, Mamasan is beautifully appointed, a modern-industrial space warmed by pale wood and black trim, with a few judiciously placed plants and quirky decorative elements including a female cartoon with chopsticks in her hair who represents "Mama." An expansive patio boasts big fans and misters.
They're open for lunch and stay open until 10 pm on weeknights and midnight on weekends.