Catch Santa Fe Poke coming to Marcy Street

Sep. 6—Right on time, the Hawaiian raw fish specialty poke is getting a brick-and-mortar presence in Santa Fe at 101 W. Marcy St.

Poke (pronounced po-keh) suddenly took hold on both coasts in about 2015 — and, in the Santa Fe tradition, a half-decade later the popular trend arrived here.

The difference is the chef behind Catch Santa Fe Poke is the same chef credited as being a major player in making poke mainstream in Los Angeles.

Dakota Weiss for the past year has been making a local name for herself as executive chef at fine dining Coyote Cafe & Cantina. But poke was her life from 2015 until 2021 as executive chef of Sweetfin, the Los Angeles poke chain where she led the kitchen from a single location in Santa Monica to a chain of 16 locations with more planned in the L.A. metro, Orange County and San Diego.

Weiss met Rich Becker at Sweetfin, where he was general manager at the Venice location, and now they are the restaurant couple behind Catch Santa Fe Poke, expected to open at 101 W. Marcy St. in October. La Lecheria has been in that small space since 2018 but is moving out at the end of September. Beestro was in the same hole-in-the-wall space from 2012 to 2017.

Weiss is concocting the recipes, while Becker will be the "master poke slinger" at Catch as Weiss continues her day job at Coyote Cafe.

"We went through the pandemic in L.A.," Weiss said. "We were done with L.A. We love the outdoors. It was a great opportunity to come back."

Weiss grew up in Santa Fe from age 12 until leaving in 1998 after doing an externship and serving as a sous chef at Coyote Cafe. Her mom and dad and sister continued to live in Santa Fe, though her mother died in January, and Weiss herself had breast cancer a year ago.

Catch Santa Fe Poke is the first brick-and-mortar poke restaurant in Santa Fe, although chef Randy Tapia rolled out the Poki Tako food truck in December that is half-and-half poke and tacos. Poke appears as a dish on a few other restaurant menus.

Weiss and Becker have been giving sneak tastes of Catch Santa Fe Poke at the Chomp food hall since May. But they will serve their last bowls Sept. 9 at Chomp.

"We had so many people at the pop-up saying, 'how fun, we need this,' " Weiss said.

"We have constant regulars that seek us out when we're open," Becker said.

Even before Catch Santa Fe Poke opens in October, Weiss and Becker will open a poke stall at the Sawmill Market food hall in Albuquerque.

"We emailed them, but they had read about us," Becker said. "Initially, it was going to be next year. They called us a couple weeks ago: Can we be

there Sept. 15?"

But they have to drop the Catch name as Salty Catch is already at Sawmill. So their Albuquerque business name will be The notorious P.O.K.E., but the food will be the same as in Santa Fe.

Catch Santa Fe Poke will be a simple arrangement. Weiss figures it will take two people to take orders and fill bowls; maybe Weiss's niece and nephew will be part of the team.

Becker figures he will run the Sawmill operation and hire people for Marcy Street. It will be mostly takeout with maybe a few inside and sidewalk tables.

"I want to keep it fun and friendly," Becker said. "Always have that smile, be quick," Becker said. "It's instant. It's about time. It takes about a minute and a half to make. It's instant gratification."

"Rich knew every single one of his repeat customers [at Sweetfin in Venice]," Weiss said.

Poke is a Hawaiian specialty, traditionally just diced raw fish and a sauce, likely green onions, and served in deli containers. In this country, poke has the raw fish mixed with any assortment of raw vegetables served in a bowl on a bed of rice — sushi or forbidden rice at Catch.

"What makes poke so special is the unique ingredients you can add together," Weiss said. "It's comfort food. It's a melting pot of delicious flavors. As long as it's small, diced, in a delicious sauce with rice, it's poke. Ours is foodie, chef driven. Everything is made in-house. We cut all the fish in-house: tuna, salmon, shrimp, tofu, plant-based tuna. We want to bring unique ingredients to Catch. We have sake-braised lotus root. The biggest thing for me was nailing the sauce: fresh lemon, lime and orange juice."

Which brings up the spelling: The original spelling is poke, but on the mainland, it is often spelled poké to guide the uninitiated to the two-syllable pronunciation.

Dakota Weiss is a poke pioneer in the Lower 48. As Sweetfin was founded in 2015 in L.A., three partners brought on Weiss as the chef, and she became the fourth partner until selling her shares at the end of last year. A poke rookie, Weiss figured it out on the spot.

The new poke craze got media attention. "In mid-2015, Los Angeles had about a dozen dedicated poke joints; two years later, there are more than 200 poke-centric eateries in L.A. County," the Hollywood Reporter reported in 2017. "'It's already becoming a staple in Los Angeles, like it is in Hawaii,' says Sweetfin's chef Dakota Weiss, who competed on Top Chef (Texas in 2011)."

Hawaii Magazine, also in 2017, acknowledged Sweetfin's and Weiss' role in mainstreaming poke in Southern California.

"Nowhere does this perfect storm of trends come together as powerfully as in Los Angeles," Hawaii Magazine wrote. "The food website, Eater, recently polled food writers and experts for one word to describe LA's dining scene — 'poke' emerged as the common denominator. Places such as Sweetfin Poke are at the forefront of the trend; Sweetfin opened its first location in April 2015, its second in October 2016 and is planning three new locations in LA for 2017. It enlisted Top Chef contestant Dakota Weiss to come up with the recipes, resulting in a mango albacore poke with ponzu-lime sauce, toppings that include wasabi toasted coconut and pickled shiitake mushrooms and bases like a kale salad and kelp noodle and cucumber slaw."

Her family told Weiss that Santa Fe needed a Sweetfin. Instead, Weiss and Becker are delivering Catch.

"I don't want to completely copycat it," Weiss said. "We made a good thing there [at Sweetfin]. Why not just alter it and make it our own?"

Weiss has done the same with her year at Coyote Cafe.

"This is my retirement job," Weiss said. "Coyote is my outlet for creative food, fun food. What I brought to the menu is a lot more seafood dishes. I'm lightening it up a bit. It's modern Southwestern cuisine with a little Asian, French and Spanish twists."