Explosion in Popularity of This Iconic Hawaiian Food in America

Visualizing the popularity of the Hawaiian food poke through social media.

Poke is an iconic Hawaiian dish of marinated raw fish with rice and vegetables. When I was living in the East coast before 2014, I never heard of it. I had my first poke in 2016 in Chicago and it wasn't even good. Now I have poke every week.

By looking at postings by users on social media pages of restaurants, we can gauge the popularity of poke with posts mentioning it in different counties. The above map shows that before 2014, poke was little known. Besides a few instances in the Bay Area, LA and New York city, there was no poke anywhere.

Over the last few years, this food has seen an explosion of popularity all over the country. However, there is still a lot of room to grow in many areas in America as evidenced by the color of the 2021 map. The Midwest and East coast largely remain untouched.

Source: Google API.