[Food police] New Year’s resolutions

Restaurant: Poké Labs
Day: Thursday, 10 January 2019
Time: 11:45
Meals: medium bowl with salmon, edamame, tofu, lettuce, cucumber and soy-sesame dressing (pescatarian) and a medium bowl with avocado, edamame, tofu, lettuce, mango and spicy dressing (vegan).

Delta too started the new year with plenty of good resolutions. One editor is doing #dryjanuary, the other is going to the gym every day. Fortunately, the Food Police are continuing to eat. This time it was a healthy option at Poké Labs.

Pesca (-)
Cold dish = thermometer stays in the bag.
Vegan (9)
For a cold dish, we don’t really need the thermometer … but wait! The rice is warm so our friend is brought out of the bag. The walk from Pulse to the Library is so long that we calculate a margin. Nevertheless, the dish scores well at a good 55 degrees despite the chilly weather. We’re impressed!

Pesca (7-)
The salmon is juicy and is cut into not too big and not too small pieces. The tofu is light though sometimes slightly soggy with the large squirt of soy-sesame dressing.
Vegan (8)
Mmm, that creamy avocado. Heavenly! The edamame is crunchy and, apart from one droopy leaf, the lettuce is fine. But the tofu is terrible. And yes, we do know what tofu should be like. The spongy texture of this tofu that we are grinding between our teeth is not up to par. Luckily the juicy mango makes up for it.

Pesca (7-)
The salmon tasted good with the soy-sesame dressing. Unfortunately, some lettuce leaves drowned in the dressing. The soy beans and cucumber tasted farm fresh.
Vegan (8)
Given the sweet mango, we went for the spicy dressing – an excellent decision! The flavour could not be better and it goes extremely well with the avocado, tofu and rice. The mixed lettuce leaves went less well though.

Pesca (7)
For a medium poké bowl, we thought we had a good amount. Fine. The proportions were good, but it could have done with a little less dressing. A tiny bit less.
Vegan (8)
A good choice to go for the medium size. Healthy enough to meet our January resolutions and enough to well fill our stomachs.

Pesca (7)
Salmon is not cheap. For the amount that you get in a medium portion, the price is right.
Vegan (5)
We found EUR 7.95 for a bowl of white rice and vegetables a bit steep. In comparison, avocado is much cheaper than salmon or prawns, which were also options at the same price. We decided to test our criticism and went shopping online at Albert Heijn. For all the ingredients (400 grams rice, 150 grams mixed lettuce leaves, 155 gram edamame, 375 gram tofu, 1 avocado and 1 mango) without dressing we paid EUR 7.88 – poké bowls for days! With the dressing we came out at EUR 9.10. We could feed the entire editorial team on this shopping. It may not be a fair comparison, but we just want to show that poké bowls are not cheap.

Pesca (7)
The dish looked just as poké bowls should look. All the ingredients are stacked in a pretty dish with the mouth-watering salmon on top.
Vegan (6)
Without the dressing, the poké bowl looks very sexy. We immediately become #influencers and #fitgirls. However, with the dressing the bowl looks more like a healthy kapsalon of doner and fries. Because we had a takeaway and the lid of the container pressed down on the dish, by the time we opened it, it was not photogenic anymore.