The first to open, in October, was Sons of Thunder in Murray Hill. It is also the best.

The fish (ahi or salmon) is beautifully fresh and well cut, in hunks large enough to give a sense of plushness on the tongue. These may arrive under a gloss of shoyu (Japanese soy sauce) and sesame oil, with tracks of alaea salt and hijiki (seaweed), subtle and as essential as ligatures. Or a chile aioli whose slow-burn heat hums in the mouth without igniting it.

Elsewhere in town, poke is typically heaped on a stark bed of rice. Here, each bowl ($7.50 to $10.75) is a terrarium of mesclun greens and seaweed salad, offsetting the richness of the fish, with a humbler cushion of rice half-hidden below. Elsewhere, I also found the white rice too clumpy, the brown rice too dry; at Sons of Thunder, both are commendably fluffy. Extras like crispy shards of garlic or a tinsel of nori add textural interest, but you don’t need them.

There is tako (octopus) poke, too, tender with just a touch of chewiness, as well as versions made with tofu or golden beets, which I thought sacrilegious until I tasted them. I still do not understand the miracle.

Then again, James Kim, who shares duties in the kitchen with his younger brother, John, was once a pastor. (The restaurant’s name comes from the troublemaker apostles James and John, whom Jesus called “sons of thunder.”) The Kims are from Queens but have roots in Hawaii; their grandparents emigrated there from South Korea.

The surfboard on the wall is James’s, on leave from Lido Beach on Long Island. In the back is a dining room with a pretty skylight and little adornment beyond two large prints by the surf photographer Brian Bielmann, of tow-in boats at Teahupoo, in Tahiti, one of the world’s great breaks, and of tiny riders in a long peel of blue.