{"id":892,"date":"2018-03-09T16:16:45","date_gmt":"2018-03-10T00:16:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/?p=63239"},"modified":"2018-03-09T16:16:45","modified_gmt":"2018-03-10T00:16:45","slug":"corona-based-poki-cat-quickly-expands-to-long-beach-with-two-new-locations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/food\/corona-based-poki-cat-quickly-expands-to-long-beach-with-two-new-locations","title":{"rendered":"Corona-Based Poki Cat Quickly Expands to Long Beach With Two New Locations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Photos by Asia Morris.<\/em><\/p>\n

Poki Cat celebrated the grand opening of its second location today with a ribbon cutting attended by owners Jin Luo and family, city officials from the City of Long Beach, The Current, Downtown Long Beach Alliance and Convention & Visitors Bureau, as well as members of the downtown community.<\/p>\n

Luo\u2019s family had a sushi restaurant in Corona for nearly 15 years, while his father has worked for notable sushi establishments, including Nobu\u2019s flagship, Matsuhisa in Beverly Hills. Luo\u2019s venture into poke, however, didn\u2019t come as naturally as you\u2019d expect.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/lbpost.com\/place\/design\/dignitaries-and-developers-celebrate-the-topping-off-of-the-current\/<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time I didn\u2019t really want anything to do with the sushi restaurant because I felt it was too complicated, there was too much tradition, it\u2019s expensive,\u201d Luo said. \u201cI wanted to get away from that so that\u2019s why I went to study music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luo moved from Corona to Chicago for the next 10 years to study opera, lived in Shanghai for three years after that, and finally landed in Long Beach where he\u2019s been living for the past six months.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI come back, and it\u2019s kinda funny, we\u2019d been selling poke at [my family\u2019s] restaurant for such a long time, but now it\u2019s such a big thing, so I thought, hey this is a really good way to get a lot of people to eat good food, to eat healthy, so that\u2019s one of the reasons we started doing poke specifically, and now there\u2019s a market for it as well,\u201d Luo said.<\/p>\n

Poki Cat has two locations, one that opened in Corona a little over two years ago and the newest one now open at The Current. They\u2019re hoping to open their third location by late April or early May at The Streets at 325 The Promenade North (near Thick Shake Factory), and a fourth in Corona on North Main Street.<\/p>\n

First Thick Shake Factory in the U.S. to Open in Long Beach<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n