Up a steep staircase, this tiny spot way downtown treats poke as a Japanese invention, by paying plenty of attention to the rice. The five signature bowls often incorporate Japanese ingredients, too, like white miso, tobiko, kizami nori, ogo seaweed, and hijiki. One selection features salted mango cream — a fruity anchovy sauce that’s a real complement to the yellowtail and scallops the bowl contains. Ongiri (rice balls) and miso soup are also available.

On the edge of Chinatown, Chikarashi looks like any other poke place (bright lighting, rudimentary seating), but it tries harder to reinterpret poke in a creative direction, with fish that’s above-average and a menu that’s “chef driven.” This is the only poke place I know of where you can get your raw fish dotted with Sichuan peppercorns, which lend fresh excitement to the dish. Find them in “Sichuan chili salmon,” which features Scottish salmon, daikon, spicy peppercorn mayo, and panko crumbs for crunch. The 12 selections have a slightly higher proportion of fish than usual.

Can a seafood restaurant do a decent poke? One would assume so. That’s the task Seamore’s sets for itself and the result isn’t bad — though when you are given the choice between using rice or chips as an accompaniment, pick rice, because the chips are blue corn chips right out of the bag, and they don’t do the poke (which contains ahi tuna, avocado, and fried shallots) any good.

This new Greenwich Village poke parlor surfed into town on a wave of hype, including making a rainbow-hued sushi donut — then quickly dropped the stunts in favor of some solid poke offerings, in a setting reminiscent of a beach cottage. Seating is along a pillow-strewn bench. Bowls are available in three sizes (the smallest comes in a beverage cup). Most appealing are those made with daily seafood specials. On a recent occasion these included yellowtail and Korean-style baby octopus — not traditional, but visually interesting.

Real Hawaiian poke as it was long ago is the forte of Noreetuh. Under the culinary direction of Per Se veteran Chung Chou, the stylish East Village bistro presents mainly reconfigured versions of Hawaiian classics such as beef-tongue musubi and kalua pork cavatelli, though the pokes (bigeye tuna or shrimp) remain seafood-centered and elemental in their simplicity. The tuna features bright red fish with two kinds of chewy seaweed and the crunch of macadamia nuts. It’s like an afternoon by the seaside.

A sushi bar already has the fixins for poke, so why not? This Japanese sushi chain that set down last year in the northern reaches of Greenwich Village savvily included several varieties of poke on its menu, including the salad- and the spare versions. All include tuna and salmon, simply dressed.

This stall in the Gansevoort Market (now located on West 14th Street rather than on Gansevoort Street) plays fast and loose with the genre, including a dish known as poke nachos. Instead of tortilla chips, fried wonton skins are substituted, and you are welcome to select the “fish” of your choice (tuna, salmon, shrimp, veggie, chicken, pork) to be flung over the top and squirted with a spicy, mayo-bearing sauce.

Reminding us of the connection between poke and surfing, this stall inside the Union Fare Gastrohall exclusively serves the Hawaiian fish salad in six preset permutations with such surf themes as hang ten, bonsai pipeline, and wipeout — the latter designating an agreeable concoction of tuna, cucumber, and greens with crunchy chow mein noodles on top. Not bad, and it emphasizes the fish more than many contemporary examples.

It’s been over a year since Pokeworks opened and a lot has been learned about the poke business in the interim. To wit: better to arrange the elements in the plastic bowl so that you can see all of them, rather than making the bowl a giant indiscernible heap of who-knows-what. And apparently, increasing the diversity of the flavorings is also a good idea. Here you can get pesto poke and kimchi poke and lots of other things in between. I went for spicy tuna poke, and rather enjoyed it.

This place was one of the first of the modern poke era (starting 2016), generating long lines as pokemania infected large segments of the dining population. Within a few months there were a dozen more such storefronts, but for a brief period this was the go-to place. It was also possibly the originator of the poke burrito, though who has bragging rights for that swollen maki roll is still a matter for debate. This is where the assembly line approach was pioneered.

Hot dogs and poke seem like a strange combination for a restaurant, especially if it’s a nice restaurant with a skylight-lit dining room. Add thick milkshakes to the mix, and you have a real head-scratcher. Yet Sons of Thunder serves some of the best and most unfussy poke in town, with baby lettuces and tobiko as a foil, rather than heavier and crunchier stuff. Octopus is also available, which has been a common poke choice in Hawaii.

With the avowed intention of taking poke back to its roots — at a slightly higher price point — Sweetcatch opened late last year under Top Cheftestant Lee Ann Wong on the East Side, an area underserved by poke. The “classic Hawaiian” includes ahi tuna and only a handful of ingredients, and a dressing made with candlenuts, a uniquely Hawaiian product and the world’s greasiest nut. Other bowls are far more baroque, and the place falls into the usual do-it-yourself, multi-option confusion.

With some modest seating in its relentlessly orange premises, Upper West Side carryout Makana offers a combination of Hawaiian and Japanese food, and though its ahi poke comes slathered with spicy mayo such as you might find in a sushi roll, it’s good. The fish is fresh and relatively unadorned: the only other ingredient is a nest of shredded daikon and a sprig or two of greenery. Other Hawaiian provender such as musubi (Spam) rolls and kalua pork also available at this humorously decorated spot.

The narrow spot with a back-lit map of Hawaii on the far wall can’t decide whether it wants to be a wine bar or a restaurant, which is a good thing if you want to wash your poke down with a glass of French wine. All the other signatures of Hawaiian cuisine in relatively unreconstructed form are available, too, and the poke is real poke, which means tuna is the star of the show.

This bright little neighborhood shoebox in Williamsburg offers the twin specialties of sushi and ramen, but peppered around the unusual menu are all sorts of Hawaiian specialties, including Spam musubi, Honolulu-style tacos, and a pair of poke choices — tuna and salmon — ensconced in sleeves of crinkly nori. The salmon is laved in Filipino calamansi vinaigrette, adding another Hawaiian element.