Walk south from Bullock Drive on a Friday night and the picture in your head is probably still the one from before the construction fencing went up: a Victorian mansion with a pub inside it, a plate of schnitzel at a table that's been there for decades, maybe a gelato stop if the kids are along. That version of Main Street Unionville is real. Jakes on Main still pours pints inside its historic mansion, and Old Country Inn still serves the same Austrian classics it always has, in the same heritage building on Main Street.
But that's not the whole street anymore, and it hasn't been for a while. Somewhere in the two years the road was torn up, the restaurant lineup on Main Street quietly stopped being a heritage-village strip with a few ethnic outliers and became something closer to a genuine food crawl, with a Yunnan-Guizhou-Sichuan bistro two doors down from an Austrian dining room that's been there since before most of the newer condos were built. If you've been walking down from Hunt Club and only stopping at the two or three places you already know, you're skipping most of what's actually there now.
The anchors are real and they're not going anywhere. Ambiyan has held its spot at 149 Main Street since 2009, serving Indian food out of a dining room that doubles as a pub with its own separate menu, on a patio that sits directly across from the Main Street bandstand. Il Postino has run Italian at 186 Main Street for years. La Grotta on Main, an Italian and Sicilian spot run by an owner reviewers know by his first name, Sebastian, currently sits as OpenTable's top-reviewed restaurant listing for all of Markham. These are the places that show up when someone who moved away ten years ago asks what's still good on Main Street. The honest answer is that they're all still there, and they're not the interesting part of the story anymore.
Main Street Unionville just came out of a $14.8 million restoration that closed sections of the road for nearly two years, with new watermains, sidewalks, paving and lighting running from the train tracks north past Carlton Road, according to the City of Markham's own project announcement. The street officially reopened on May 31, 2026, and CBC News covered the ceremony, where longtime visitor David Pollard talked about feeling for the businesses that had to operate through the closures. A local business owner named McLean, quoted in that same coverage, put it plainly, saying foot traffic during construction was so thin some days felt like nobody was coming at all.
That matters for the restaurant lineup because it means most of what's opened or expanded in the last two years did it while the sidewalk in front of the door was half torn up. The new places that survived that stretch and are now sitting on freshly widened sidewalks aren't hanging on. They're the ones that made it through the hardest possible version of a launch.
Here's a working list of what you'll pass walking the length of Main Street this month, not a "best of" ranking, just what's open and what it's known for:
| Restaurant | Cuisine | What It's Known For |
|---|---|---|
| Ambiyan | Indian, plus a separate pub menu | On Main Street since 2009, patio across from the bandstand |
| Il Postino | Italian | Sit-down Italian at 186 Main Street |
| La Grotta on Main | Italian, Sicilian | Currently OpenTable's top-reviewed Markham restaurant |
| Old Country Inn | Austrian | Schnitzels and traditional Austrian dishes in a historic building |
| Jakes on Main | Pub fare | Set inside a Victorian mansion, family-friendly room for large groups |
| Next Door | Brunch, contemporary | Patio that looks out over the man-made pond on Main Street |
| Smash Kitchen & Bar | Contemporary | Sister restaurant to Next Door |
| Qing Asian Fusion Bistro | Yunnan-Guizhou-Sichuan | The newest name generating real word of mouth |
| Nam 2 | Vietnamese | Known among regulars as one of the more authentic Vietnamese kitchens in Markham |
| Chat Bar | Hong Kong-style cafe | A few minutes off Main Street proper, parking gets tight at peak hours |
| Sung Won | Korean, takeout-only | Also just off Main Street, no seating but strong value |
That's not a strip anchored by one cuisine with a few exceptions anymore. That's a genuinely mixed lineup, and the mix is the part that hasn't caught up to how most people still describe the street.
Qing Asian Fusion Bistro is the one worth paying attention to if you haven't been down in a few months. It's a Yunnan-Guizhou-Sichuan restaurant, a regional Chinese cuisine that's genuinely uncommon in most of the GTA outside a handful of specialty spots, and it's opened in the same stretch of Main Street where the safest bet used to be a plate of pasta. Reviewers have called it one of the harder-to-get-into new spots in Markham right now. Whether or not it stays that busy, its presence on Main Street says something about who's opening restaurants there now and what they think will work. A regional Chinese bistro betting on Main Street Unionville is a different signal than another café or another pub.
Ambiyan is the useful counterpoint. It opened on Main Street in 2009, well before the restoration, well before Qing Asian Fusion Bistro or Next Door, and it's still running its patio across from the bandstand while newer neighbors have come and gone around it. Long-time reviewers describe it as one of the businesses that outlasted the churn on the block. That kind of longevity on a street that just went through two years of construction closures is its own small proof that the location works, not just for tourists on a Saturday afternoon but for a restaurant trying to make rent through a winter with half the sidewalk fenced off.
The Hunt Club sits right at Highway 7 East and Bullock Drive, backed against the same protected greenspace and pond trail system that eventually connects toward Toogood Pond and into the village. It's close enough that the walk down to Main Street has always been realistic rather than theoretical. One regular at Next Door describes the trip to the restaurant as a twenty-minute walk rather than a drive, and Hunt Club sits at a comparable distance along that same corridor. With the sidewalks now wider and the road work finished, that walk is easier this August than it's been in two years, and it ends at a lineup of restaurants that's genuinely broader than the one most people still have in their heads.
If you've been defaulting to the same two or three spots since the fencing came down, this is the month to widen the loop. Start at the bandstand, work your way past Il Postino and La Grotta, and end somewhere you haven't tried yet. The street earned that.
For residents thinking further ahead than dinner, whether that's a downsizing move, a condo sale, or just curiosity about what a Hunt Club unit is worth in this market, Walker Parker Real Estate knows this stretch of Markham block by block. Book a consultation whenever that conversation is worth having.
Walker Parker Real Estate sweats the big stuff, the small stuff, and everything in between, and believes your Buying or Selling experience should be as seamless as possible from start to finish. We ensure your best interests are being served at all times, and are deeply invested in every step of your real estate journey, because you deserve it. Get in touch - we would love to chat!