A new street food vendor is adding the poke burger to your summer cravings

Just when you thought Toronto must surely have exhausted all possible food permutations, another CNE-style mash-up is landing in the city this summer. Poke Burgers is bringing a whole new category of cravable handhelds—something between a poke bowl and a smash burger—to the World Food Market, a cosmopolitan street-food hub at Yonge and Gould, later this summer.

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The poke burger sandwiches sushi-grade fish (marinated or cooked shrimp, tuna or salmon), crab salad, avocado, sesame seeds and three signature sauces (cilantro, spicy mayo, eel) between two crispy deep-fried rice “buns.”

The idea was born of a lunchtime disagreement between recent business graduates and co-founders Cesar Mandujano and Julian Tangarife over whether they should have poke bowls or smash burgers. Enter: the poke burger.

“It sounded weird but also innovative and quite delicious,” says Tangarife, who moved to Canada from Colombia in 2021, while Cesar moved from Mexico in 2019. Disheartened by Toronto’s job market and emboldened by the popularity of fusion foods like sushi tacos, they chose to stop looking for desk jobs and instead pursue their shared passion. “Since moving to Canada, we’ve loved exploring Toronto’s food scene and supporting local restaurants,” says Tangarife.

But the poke burger, which they’re hoping will become Toronto’s next big food craze, is no half-baked dorm room brainwave. Months of research, recipe testing and business development have gone into the project. Rather than toiling behind the scenes, the entrepreneurial duo have been documenting it all on social media, crowd-sourcing their strategy as they go.

“Newcomers lack resources for starting businesses in Canada,” says Tangarife. “We didn’t have any contacts in the city to help get the word out. So we used the resources we had—social media channels—to build a community around our idea. We’ve received really positive feedback so far.”

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Poke Burgers will also offer traditional and customizable poke bowls with all the accoutrements, as well as loaded fries with deep-fried shrimp, their signature sauces, green onion and shredded nori.

“Our catchphrase is: welcome to the poke burger revolution. That sums up what we want to do,” says Tangarife. “We want to revolutionize what people think can go between two buns—and we want to give back to the beautiful city that opened its doors to us. We hope to one day be able to contribute to charitable causes, like Environmental Defence Canada. Poke burgers are just the beginning.”