During the five years that the Ohana Hale Marketplace was open, it proved to be a successful incubator of restaurants.

The marketplace closed in spring, with plans to reopen elsewhere in Kakaako, but a handful of former tenants graduated from the mall’s small booths to brick-and-mortar locations.Among them are Fat Cheeks (now at Ward Centre), Nana Ai Katsu in Kaimuki, Bo’s Kitchen at 800 S. Beretania St., and soon-to-reopen Atsushi at Waterfront Plaza.

Two other former tenants, Ocean Taste and Yoas, have teamed up to open on Kapiolani Boulevard — in the space that was formerly home to Izakaya Gazen — for the one-two punch of poke bowls and dessert sorbets. Yoas also created the Bad Weather Bar for a handful of meat bowls and cheeseburgers should you tire of fish.

With wide-ranging operations, Yoas also managed to re-create the random ambiance of Ohana Hale Marketplace, offering up for sale air plants, doggie and anime planters, aquascapes and phone accessories to browse while waiting for food to arrive.

The business is to-go oriented but if you choose to dine in, there’s a fair amount of counter seating at windows with a view of Kapiolani.

It’s Ocean Taste that has the more sizable menu, so that’s where my focus is today.

To start, poke bowls with a base of sushi rice are $12.95. Swap the rice for green salad for $13.95, or get both rice and greens for $14.95.

Ahi, salmon or tako poke come in flavors such as spicy Sriracha mayo or garlic mayo. The spicy version also comes with a sweet unagi sauce, and though some people definitely have an affinity to sugar, I don’t really care for sweetened fish so next time I would probably ask for the poke without unagi sauce.

If you’re like me, the more basic shoyu-onion ahi or salmon, or creamy wasabi ahi or ginger ahi may be more to your liking. There’s also a vegetarian-oriented sesame soy sauce tofu poke with avocado.

At the marketplace, Ocean Taste also became known for its aburi, or torched, offerings that separate it from other poke practitioners.

There are some fun dishes here, such as the cheesy crab ($14.95) with shredded Kanikama crab (surimi), house cheese sauce, masago and green onions over rice, and the spicy salmon crème brulée ($15.95).Again, not really thinking about what to expect, I found the sweetness somewhat off-putting, especially when hit with a few crunchy grains of granulated sugar, but underneath the brulée, the salmon dressed with house spicy mayo was delicious.

If you’re in the mood to share, there are spicy señorita and garlic tornado nachos ($17.95 each), both featuring spicy ahi, crab salad, avocado and the unagi sauce that rendered the spicy señorita less spicy than it could have been.

Purists might skip the saucier dishes in favor of various chirashi don with such evocative names as lava flow don ($18.95) and snowy volcano don ($15.95). Both turned out to be my favorites of the Ocean Taste experience. The lava flow features slices of sweet Hokkaido scallops topped with a scoop of spicy ahi from which flowed red streams of ikura, while the snowy volcano comprised a layer of spicy ahi topped with shredded snow crab.

The five seasons don ($27.95) is the most luxe and traditional of the bowls, combining ahi, salmon, uni, ikura and snow crab.

Afterward, wander over to Yoas for a half pint ($5) or pint ($7.50) of the day’s sorbets ranging in flavors from lilikoi to white peach to green river. I sat down to enjoy just half of the half pint, always aiming for portion control. Alas, I ended up devouring the entire carton of white peach, roughly two scoops. I’m sure if I’d ordered a pint I would have finished that, too. It was that good.

Ocean Taste

2840 Kapiolani Blvd., Honolulu
Food: ***
Service: **½
Ambiance: **½
Value: ***
Call: 808-636-0877
Hours: 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays, 4-6 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays
Prices: $35-$45 for two before tax and tip, without alcohol

Nadine Kam’s restaurant visits are unannounced and paid for by Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Follow Nadine on Instagram (@nadinekam) or on YouTube (youtube.com/nadinekam).