Poke Chop

Where Herb & Sea is asking you to dress up a little and commit to an occasion, Poke Chop is asking nothing of you except that you show up hungry. That's not a dig — it's the whole point. This is the spot you hit between appointments, after a surf, or when the neighborhood wants something clean and fast without sacrificing the kind of fish quality that actually matters on the coast.

The format is Chipotle-style, which sounds lazy until you realize the execution is what separates it. You pick your base, load your proteins — salmon, seared albacore, marinated tuna are all worth your attention — then pile on toppings with the confidence that they're not rationing. The bowls are genuinely heavy. The cucumber salad topping alone has its own fan base, and the house Encinitas Bowl is the go-to for first-timers who don't want to make decisions.

The sweet sesame sauce skews sweet, which is worth knowing if you're running savory. Gluten-free options are limited, and the gyoza has drawn mixed reviews — stick to the poke and let everything else be a footnote. Beer is on the menu, there's outdoor seating, and the staff is the kind of friendly that doesn't feel performed.

For Encinitas, where the casual-lunch spectrum runs from forgettable to genuinely good, Poke Chop lands firmly in the latter. The 4.6 rating across 159 reviews isn't an accident — it's regulars who found their go-to and stopped looking around. Worth the stop any day of the week.