Black Bear Review: Japanese Fusion at its Best

About Black Bear Japanese Fusion

Address: 4568 Hwy 7 #3, Unionville, ON L3R 1M5

Phone: (905) 940-9288

Black Bear Japanese Fusion was opened in March 2017 and specializes in Japanese fusion cuisine. It is definitely one of the hidden gems in Markham. The restaurant is located in a small plaza near Highway 7 and Kennedy, right beside Service Ontario.

Owner Berry used to run an Italian restaurant in Hong Kong. He specializes in using Japanese ingredients and seafood in making Western dishes.

The restaurant has a causal atmosphere with basic wood tables. Murals on the wall are cute with different animals such as hippos, dog, but surprising no bear despite the restaurant’s name.

Black Bear always changes their menu with daily special and lunch menus. That way you can always come back and taste something new.

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Appetizers

For appetizer, we tasted the Flaming Sea Urchin Baguette (available for dinner only). This is the first time we had sea urchin on bread as they are usually served with sushi for Japanese meals. The bread absorbed the urchins taste and overall they mixed together surprising well.

Another appetizer is Unagi Fusion baguette. The sweet and flavorful unagi (Japanese sea eel) sauce is soaked inside the bread, making the bread very tasteful.

We also tasted the Dak Galbi Scallion Pancake which is more of a Korean fusion. The sauce is very spicy and tasted wonderfully with the pancake.

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Main Courses

For mains, we tasted their famous Unagi Rice Burger. We had rice burger before back in Mos Burger in Japan, but we must say the rice burger we had in Black Bear tasted even better than the Japanese counterpart. One of the problems with rice burger is that since they are made of rice, they would usually fall apart easily. But Black Bear’s rice burger did not have this problem as the rice buns were packed together very densely. It was so tight that we had to use knife and apply force when we try to split the burger for sharing. The rice buns were grilled and thus is little bit crispy on the top. The burger comes with a large piece of unagi that is grilled perfectly. The unagi sauce soaked into the rice buns made a heavenly combo. There were also fries that come with the burger.

The other main dish we had was the Mentaiko Soft Shell Crab Spaghetti. The soft shell crab was fried and was very chewy and the cream sauce was also very tasty with rich carbonara flavor and bacon bits.

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Desserts / Drinks

For dessert, we had the Matcha and Red Bean Panna Cotta. This dish just looks amazing with beautifully decorated plating. The 2 pieces of matcha penna cotta is sided with red bean and lotus pastes and whip cream.

The other dessert we had was the Strawberry Ice Cream Parfait. It was cutely made with strawberry Pocky on top.

There are a wide variety of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks too. We had the Golden Krone and Apple Tree and both tasted great!

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Overall we enjoyed Black Bear Japanese Fusion very much and would definitely come back when we want to eat Japanese food but don’t want the traditional sushi or ramen bowls.

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