Shiso Tree Cafe

This is one of my favourite places. The lunch deal is my favourite — perfect portion size, and a little bit of everything (soup, salad, pasta, bread) for $ 8. It’s a cozy ambiance and a the wait staff are generally on top of things.
The new menu is interesting. Apparently «pork belly» is bacon (or at least it looked and tasted like it). Tasty, but it’s definitely not pork belly.

Not from Toronto and I was looking forward to this restaurant with the Japanese flavoured pasta. We ordered the okonomiyaki fries which was quite good. However the pastas weren’t what I have expected. It did not taste as good as I thought and it was quite a heavy meal to finish it.

I’ve come here a couple of times over the years. It’s probably one of the better options for Japanese Fusion in the area. However each time nothing really wows me.
Staff: I think they need to work on their service skills. The wait staff is always standing around the counter and requires me to flag down and ask for refills and stuff. No one really checks in on you. Flagging down someone isn’t a problem except how the place is set up (there’s an elevated area), they can’t see certain tables if they don’t walk around. It’s mildly frustrating at times.
Ambience: It’s comfortable, but I would say it isn’t very accessible to everyone since there’s steps everywhere. However it’s got a nice vibe going on.
Food: I had the Bolognese Fries to start. It’s a hefty portion and the fries were not the best. The only word I can think to describe it is «potato-​like»? It wasn’t quite fries, it wasn’t quite wedges, and it wasn’t quite potato skins; that’s the only thing I can say. For my main I ordered Smoked Salmon a la Crème Vodka which was pretty tasty so I’ll give thumbs up for that. The sauce was nice, and the salmon pieces were tender. Overall, it was quite filling.
I’ll probably come back on the odd occasion.

Japanese Fusion restaurant in J-​Town (pasta, salads, fries, and dessert.) Come here for anything but the pasta — inconsistency issues
I can’t speak for any component except for the pasta (unfortunately), since after coming here twice it seemed like the best deal. It’s served with salad, soup, and garlic bread.
The good: The salad is good. It’s not watery like a lot of other places. Drizzled with what seems like a soy sauce vinaigrette but I could be wrong. Soup was a grainy cream of potato. Definitely something I don’t come across often!
The bad: So both times I came in, I’ve had some bad luck of the draw. Though the spaghetti is thin and is cooked al dente, it resembles «Sidekick» pasta, which is common in Japanese cuisine. I’m envious that both times I went my friend’s mushroom garlic butter pasta/​unagi don tasted relatively good, but something always seemed to be lacking on my plate. The first time I came in, garlic bread was missing, the second time, there was a lack of smoked salmon (I got miniscule slivers which is probably half a slice shredded up).

Came here for dessert pretty late but they were still opened!
The waitress was kind and very informative. Showed us the available cakes and brought them out at a reasonable time.
Will defo go back. Next time we’ll try the pasta.

Came a few weeks ago for a weekend lunch. Their weekend lunch menu differs from their weekday lunch menu. Their weekday lunch menu is significantly cheaper. I’ve come for dinner before, and I remember their okonomiyaki fries are delicious. This time, I had their baked crab gratin on rice (something like that). If I recall correctly, it was supposed to be snow crab in cream sauce atop tomato rice, baked with breadcrumbs on top. The pictures do it more justice than I can describe it. Taste-​wise, it was not very impressive. I couldn’t find or taste much crab. It was all quite… mild. It was also slightly burnt. It came with a side salad that was a tad strong on the soy sauce, and not strong enough in the vinegar compartment.

They take reservations! Got to sit in the cute booth by the window, but you have to take off your shoes.
Smoked Salmon on garlic toast appetizer was yummy, as well as the smoked salmon salad. Also got the Okonomiyaki Fries… really nothing special… Definitely lacked a LOT more sauce. Very dry with all the dry seasonings.
Onto the Entrees:
Fettucini Rose with snow crab and ikura was delicious! I thoroughly enjoyed it. Good amount of crab meat and the sauce had a very rich, deep, crab flavour. By far the best entrée we ordered.
Sukiyaki pasta tastes a bit like beef ramen. It was tasty, but TOO SALTY unfortunately.
Lastly, my other two friends got the Carbonara and the Smoked Salmon alla vodka, and both cream sauces were EXTREMELY BLAND and not palatable. Would not recommend these dishes.
Overall, it’s a really interesting concept having pasta with a Japanese flavour. Worth a try, but don’t go in with too high expectations!

Cold beer served in a tall glass.
Ordered:
Spaghetti, Japanese style.
French fries, with seaweed and mayo.
2 other un-​memorable pasta dishes that came with a soup.
The only good thing about this brunch was my cold beer.
Authentic Japanese fare and Japanese customer service, but food was just expensive.
Very home-​made in taste that I regretted believing the other Unilocalers’ review. The fries were just fried and laid out with seaweed/​furikake/​mayonnaise. I am laughing now that some Unilocalers found it, «out-​of-​this-​world-​amazing»!
Some of these Unilocalers, I think, are just obsessed with Japanese food that their taste buds just give 4 or 5 stars without mérit.

Small Japanese shop in jtown. Menu is a mixture of Japanese/​italian. Overall, food is mediocre and service is not bad.
I ordered the chicken nanban rice. It’s size able for a lunch. It’s like a chicken roulade (thigh) breaded and coated with teriyaki sauce and some tartar sauce. I’m not a fan of teriyaki sauce is generally because it’s too sweet. The tartar sauce gives it an interesting kick. For 8 – 9 bucks it’s worth trying for lunch. It also starts with a small salad.
My parents got the smoke salmon salad and smoke salmon pasta. These came with soups. I definitely wouldn’t recommend these. Especially the pasta. The portions are a lot small, there’s not a lot of smoke salmon in the pasta. Spaghetti is overlooked.
I didn’t have it but the okonomayki fries looked good. I may come back to try that if I venture back to jtown again.

I wish I came here earlier! It’s a cute little Japanese restaurant with decent food and good prices. Theres an option to sit on the floor in a secluded area by the door which is pretty cool. This is a Japanese style café restaurant that serves Japanese-​american fusion food.
I ordered the okonomoyaki fries and yaki udon dish which both were pretty good. I really like the Japanese style fries with the toppings they added on top (the flaky stuff… Bonito flakes??) and the nori. The udon was abit too fatty and oily for me with all that pork fat but nonetheless, was good until the last few bites.
I definitely will come back to try some more dishes. Service was great and our waitress always made sure our cups were full without us asking at all. Make sure to order the fries!

Finally had a chance to try the famous Japanese pasta.
The pasta was made well. I found the shio sauce to be on the salty side, however it was quite flavourful.
Service was good — waitress ensured our water was always full and was very pleasant.

Shiso Tree Café is a very cozy Japanese pasta restaurant. We ordered nori fries, smoked salmon rose pasta and Carbonara pasta. Both pasta comes with a toast and salad. Unlike the normal complementary salad, the salad sauce is not too cliché. The taste of the pastas are very clean and tasty. The nori fries are crunchy and the seaweed taste are not overpowering. We will come back to Shiso Tree Café for sure!

This place has always been on point and I’ve been here at least 5 times already, and it always gets better.
This just released a new menu and I’ve tried the Japanese Poutine, Okonomiyaki Fries, various Pastas, and Yaki Udon. It’s all delicious and I’d highly recommend this place to anybody who likes Japanese but is looking for something interesting with the Japanese style. This place is always good and has always been good.
Very savoury and delicious food with such a unique menu, which you can’t really find anywhere else around here.

This is my family’s favorite place for Japanese style pasta. But for a period of time, their standards slipped a bit. For a while, their food had been hit or miss, service slacked. We stopped going until last week.
They have a brand new lunch menu, which is quite exciting. There’s a whole page of new items on top of the familiar pastas they’ve got. We tried some of the new items. 2 of them were outstanding! The Unagi Tamago Dashi Rice was absolutely delicious! The egg with the dashi sauce on top of the rice goes nicely with the unagi. The Yaki Udon is the best I’ve had so far. I never liked yaki udon. Most of the time the noodles are tasteless. Not the ones here. It has a nice sauce, in which the udon full absorbed the taste, and the dish was serve covered with bonito flakes, seaweed and green onion. Not to mention lots of pork slices fried with the noodles.
We had a large group, so we also ordered other dishes. The pastas were as good as before and the Banana Crepes was what I remembered.
Service is good. Maybe still not back to their old standard. But improved from their low time.
We can see that they made a great effort to come back, and they did a good job.
Will keep an eye to see if they can keep it up.

Shiso tree café is an awesome, cozy place to eat some really unique food — where can one get Japanese pasta? Not very many places for sure!
Came here on a rainy Friday night for a dinner with a friend and had a good time! I liked the ambience of the restaurant as it was really cozy and simple.
We asked the waitress for her recommendations so we ordered the shrimp okonomiyaki and sukiyaki wafu spaghetti with a side order of okonomiyaki fries to share. We were really impressed with the fries. There were a ton and they were nice and crisp with skin-​on (the best!). The sweetness of the steak sauce balanced well with the freshness of the green onion and creaminess/​sweetness of the mayo! The pastas were tasty too. The shrimp okonomiyaki tasted exactly like the fries except it was on spaghetti with four shrimp. Personally I found the sukiyaki better than the shrimp but maybe that’s because I indulged on the too similar okonomiyaki fries first. The shrimp pasta was on the heavy side but that’s just me! All in all I really enjoyed this unique twist on pasta.
The short cake (from the nearby nakamura bakery) was a nice way to end a good meal.
On the down side, I wish we ordered one of the other pastas for variety because everything tasted too similar (sweet tasting) after a while. Next time I will opt for the tomato based and cream & rose based pastas! Value is not terrible nor great, but is decent.
Service was great, despite our exhaustion from skating earlier our thirst was quenched and our water were refilled frequently :) We arrived at 9pm and despite the place closing at 10, we were never rushed. We even stayed ¹⁰⁄₁₅ minutes past closing without any fuss.

Last year, during the summer, there was a time in which I came at least once every week and the servers started to recognize me. What kept me coming back? I am a big fan of the salad and fries, which is a bit weird for a Japanese-​Italian fusion restaurant known for its pasta. While the pastas are delicious, they were also very big and creamy and I cannot possibly have them that often (especially after an order of their amazing fries). The salads use a really yummy Japanese-​style dressing and the fries are a delicious Fusion experience (check out their Okonomiyaki or Nori fries).
What also kept me coming back was the coffee, which was $ 2 for all you can drink and it wasn’t just crappy coffee you can get anywhere. The atmosphere of the place is just so lovely. It’s a beautiful modern setting with soft acoustic music playing in the background. It almost feels like I’ve been transported to a small roadside café in Japan. I’ve eaten in a lot of places around Markham, there really doesn’t seem to be any other place that has the same feel. I think Shiso Tree Café is a unique experience in a category of its own.

Not a bad place in almost a hidden part of Markham called «J-​Town.» Lots of Japanese grocery and food to peruse and enjoy.
This place fits the café motif and gives a nice menu to compliment that with lots of light options, Japanese and fusion fare. I had the Japanese poutine and it was nice. Would I have it again? maybe. The presentation was definitely nice, and the green tea cake of the day pretty good as well.
Good for the experience to try it out if you’re looking for something light.

I’ve visited this restaurant a couple of times, and each time the food was great. This is the only Japanese-​fusion restaurant I’ve been to.
The place is a bit small, just as the name suggests it’s a café. The first time I dined here it was just 2 of us, and everything from the service to the food was impressive.
The last couple of visits though, were with a big family group which had some kids. We were given a limited menu of 8 pastas to chose from since we were more than 12 people… (12 adults, 3 kids) We were however, able to order the specials listed on their wall.
The service was slower than normal, which was odd since the restaurant wasn’t busy. The table we were situated at felt really crammed up against the window. Everyone’s meal came out at different times, and mine came out the latest. I felt super rushed as the other half waited to order desserts.
The desserts were great, as they are freshly baked the bakeries next door.
Would I return? Probably not. Unless I was in the area looking for coffee and dessert.

Came here three times, twice for dinner and once for lunch.
It was a cute little restaurant inside J-​TOWN and it wasn’t difficult to find. Walking in, the first thing I saw was a drum set, and I thought to myself, is this a place where they place music? However, I don’t think the drum set is used occasionally.
I would definitely rate lunch over dinner as there were less people and the food was actually tastier during lunch. This time, we went during dinner.
From the photos that I posted, we got:
1) Unagi-​don ($ 17)
2) Shiso Clam Vongole ($ 15)
3) Shrimp Okonomiyaki ($ 14)
All three of these came with a complimentary soup and salad and a piece of garlic bread on the side.
I’ve never heard of a Japanese pasta before, but I’m glad I tried it because this tasted really good. Instead of having pasta with the regular tomato or alfredo sauce, this added a twist to regular pasta. The unagi, shrimp and clams were delicious as well as it was rich in flavour and cooked to the right amount of time and temperature.

If you’re looking for delicious Japanese-​Italian fusion cuisine, Shiso Tree Café is the place!
Tucked away in J-​Town, this tiny café is cozy yet gives you ample space between each table. The servers are extremely friendly and speedy — our water cups will filled at all times.
Their specials are posted on the walls, so be sure to check it out before you order. I opted for the Unagi-​Don pasta ($ 17) — comes with their house salad. It was deeeeee-​licious! The pasta was cooked to perfection and seaweed and eel complemented the creamy sauce — It’s what heaven tastes like!
I will be coming back here in the future for sure! Unlike other Japanese-​owned restaurants, they’re open on Sundays! Next on my check list — their Japanese poutine!