Recipes are straightforward, with minute shadings. Here is ahi with inamona and sea salt; there, ahi with limu and sea salt. Shoyu is calibrated with little more than ginger. As for “Tamura’s secret sauce,” the manager I spoke with laughed and said, “I can’t tell you.”

The Foodland near my mom’s house, one of more than two dozen statewide, has a sign over the poke counter that says “Hawaii’s home for poke,” and it is — the never-fail poke you run to the store for when friends announce they’re stopping by.

The shoyu ahi is strong and just salty enough (ask for the shoyu to be packed in a separate container, to add at home); the spicy ahi has a worthy heat. The recipes for all outlets are overseen by Mr. Chang, a graduate of the Kamehameha Schools and the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y.

There’s nothing ceremonial about his approach. He uses ingredients like sea asparagus, truffle oil and gochujang, and makes a deconstructed California-roll poke with avocado, furikake and sriracha, one of the stores’ best-sellers. And he’s not against the mainland poke craze, “so long as you take time to understand the history and apply common sense and restraint.”

“If it’s amazingly delicious — ” he said, and trailed off. “It’s a free country.”

If You Go

AHI ASSASSINS

2570 South Beretania Street, second floor (University Avenue), Moiliili; 808-439-4045; ahiassassins.com