Tacoma’s Pac Ave losing a go-to lunch spot. Restaurant announces permanent closure

The Pacific Avenue corridor has taken another hit, as Sam Choy’s Poke to the Max announced it has closed its downtown Tacoma restaurant.

The Hawaiian fast-casual chain opened in 2017 at 1716 Pacific Ave., one of many storefronts owned by the University of Washington Tacoma in that corridor. On Wednesday morning, Sam Choy’s Poke announced it had closed for good.

“It’s been a fun ride,” a post on Instagram and Facebook began, with a hang-ten emoji. “After seven years, we’re sad to say goodbye [to] our Tacoma shop. We say mahalo for every customer and staff member that has passed through our doors. We’ve loved every minute of your support.”

The post noted other regional locations that remain open, including in Seattle’s Hillman City neighborhood and at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (near gate D6). Sam Choy’s also operates at San Francisco International Airport.

“Please continue to support small business — you keep us alive!” the post concluded.

Google lists the Tacoma restaurant as “temporarily closed,” but it has been removed from the locations page on Sam Choy’s Poke to the Max website.

The News Tribune reached out to several contacts listed on business filings, including by phone and email, but no messages have been returned. An employee at the Seattle restaurant said she could not give out the company number and pointed to the general email as the only option.

A message sent on Instagram was seen but not returned.

Although the restaurant bears the chef’s name, Sam Choy’s Poke to the Max was not exclusively a project of the prolific, Oahu-born chef, who is credited with being integral to both the development of Hawaiian Regional Cuisine in the 1990s and with popularizing poke itself. He is often called “ the godfather of poke .”

Seattle-based entrepreneur Max Heigh introduced the brand as a food truck in 2011. According to The News Tribune archives, he was a family friend of Choy and worked with him to develop the Poke to the Max concept. The menu offered more than just poke bowls and wraps, including various musubis (seaweed-rice wraps with Spam, chicken or tuna), fried chicken, Kalua pork and loco moco.

In the ensuing years, Heigh expanded the enterprise to three roving vehicles and the Hillman City restaurant.

Michael and Nichole Gonzalez are listed on the Tacoma location’s state business documents, under the name Dos Keiki’s LLC. An email to the address on file was not immediately returned.

In an email, a University of Washington spokesperson said the school did not have a comment about the closure, nor could he speak to the status of the lease.

It has been a challenging summer for the Tacoma campus, which suffered a major power outage on July 6 after a speeding vehicle crashed into an important, high-voltage switchgear. University buildings and most of the businesses, including several restaurants, along Pacific Avenue from South 17th to 21st streets were without power for nearly two weeks. Generators were since installed, and the university is in the midst of a lengthy plan to find a permanent solution , The News Tribune reported last month.

It is unclear if the restaurant ever reopened along with other businesses around July 25.

Editor’s Note, 8/15/24 : This story has been updated with comment from the University of Washington.