Poke It Up — Restaurant in Madison

I honestly cannot believe there are so many 5 star ratings for this place, but I might have had just bad luck that day with our order. First off, I'll start with the staff, that is extremely friendly and helpful. And compared to the Poke Plus and Teriyaki, this place at least gives the correct portions of Poke in the bowl at a reasonable price. The problems we encountered were, the tuna and salmon poke pieces we had in our bowl were still partially frozen. In addition, the "crab" was just imitation crab meat, which I still normally would like, but this one had a weird texture that I can't seem to comprehend. Their House Poke Sauce was fairly bland and boring and nothing that would tantalize my taste buds. Again this is another Japanese restaurant run by Chinese people, so perhaps they don't understand how to make prepare a Poke Bowl. Presentation was very nice and the seaweed salad tasted fine. The rice was a little better than Poke Plus and Teriyaki, but I couldn't tell if they tried to cheap out on sushi rice too aka nishiki rice. They may have put some grains in and mixed it with cheap long grain rice, but texturally speaking the rice was better cooked than the other. They also do have sushirritos also. I will give them another chance. The people there were very nice and I want there to be at least a few decent Japanese restaurants in Madison. Unfortunately, that is a long way from...

Super fast delivery and nice service but as someone who has tried most of the Poke places in Madison, I was let down with Poke it Up. We ordered 3 bowls and only one of them was good. Only one of us ended up finishing our bowls which pretty much never happens. One of the bowls in particular, osaka, was absolutely horrible. It was bland in flavor and had the worst toppings (iceburg lettuce, corn, and imitation crab with poke, how do those go together?) the other bowls we had were fine, nothing special, and they were create your owns with the same things we typically get from other locations. The cucumbers were very bland (some placed do some pickling or seasonings), there was limited sauce on all 3 bowls, and I felt like the sides were in big chunks and could have been cut smaller. but the spicy tuna was good! After this experience and frequent good visits at other Poke locations, I would choose to order Poke elsewhere...

I've never had poke that made me feel physically ill before, but this was it. The Hawaii green, which we ordered takeout, was absolutely slathered in this white-orange "poke sauce" which completely covered every other flavor in the bowl. Fresh, delicate sushi-grade fish is the main part of every poke bowl right? Why would you coat everything with massive amounts of some cloying sauce unless you're trying to disguise something?

When we placed the order online on our way past campus, we waited out in our car for about 15 minutes to give the staff time to make our two bowls. However, after 15 minutes when we went in to check on things, the staff hadn't even begun making it yet. There was no one else eating there. Not sure why the delay.

All in all, never will go back again. There's plenty of other poke options, farther...