Black Pearl, a popular osteria and martini bar on South Main Street, completed a significant expansion in April by taking over the space previously occupied by a neighboring Starbucks, which closed in October 2023. According to Black Pearl co-owner Harry Cohen, the expansion was planned as soon as Starbucks closed and took 18 months to complete. The restaurant remained open for most of the construction, and the new section opened April 30. As part of the expansion, Black Pearl also added a new sushi menu.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Cohen said the added space allows the restaurant to serve a higher volume of guests via additional indoor seating suitable for year-round use.
“We have 200 indoor seats, which has completely changed our availability to serve customers,” Cohen said. “On busy nights, usually Thursday through Sunday, it is often impossible to get a table. Now we can take more customers and have a more diverse offering for those customers.”
Cohen said the added space also required hiring new staff, whose members are an essential part of the restaurant’s culture.
“We want staff who have a great, positive attitude and a great work ethic,” Cohen said. “I want the Black Pearl to be the best job anyone has ever had for however long they work for us.”
In an interview with The Daily, rising LSA senior Carolina Silveri, a server for Black Pearl, said the expansion has been received well by customers.
“We’ve been expanded for about a month now, and we’ve been pretty busy,” Silveri said. “A lot of regular guests have been excited about (the expansion), and we’re also going into our busy season right now, so we’ve been busy with the patio seating as the weather starts to be more consistently nice.”
Black Pearl now also features an open kitchen dedicated to making sushi. Jae Myoung has worked at the restaurant as its sushi chef since August and has made sushi for over six years. Myoung told The Daily he began his cooking journey working at his family restaurant before going to culinary school.
“My dad went to a sushi academy in Korea before he moved here, and he was a sushi chef for about 20 years,” Myoung said. “I was learning a lot under him. When I came to Black Pearl, I knew what sushi rolls might sell. I wanted to be creative in my craft, so I decided to fuse what I know and what I learned from (culinary) school together to find the perfect balance of the menu that people will like.”
Myoung said the current sushi menu is temporarily condensed while the restaurant determines the best offerings before fully expanding the menu.
“Right now, my vision is to get acclimated and then start growing, start releasing feature rolls, feature nigiri and feature temaki rolls,” Myoung said. “So, at the moment, we released the sushi menu, but it’s been condensed a bit as we figure out systematically what works and what doesn’t work. And once we streamline everything, the (full) sushi menu will be back.”
Black Pearl’s new summer menu launched in May and offers new entrees such as pan roasted barramundi. Myoung also said the new sushi selections include nigiri, hand rolls, vegetarian options and more.
“Some popular items on the current menu are firecracker rolls, Ann Arbor rolls and the Black Pearl roll,” Myoung said. “A lot of our nigiri are popular as well. We have salmon, tuna, nakamachi and barbecue eel on the menu as of today. And then there’s also the roll called Niji Works, which is a combination of a specialty roll and a rainbow roll. We decided to combine those two, since it’s a very popular roll, so we’re giving (guests) all the works of what we have in house.”
Myoung said the Black Pearl team has created a motivating work environment for workshopping the restaurant’s new sushi menu.
“The working culture is amazing,” Myoung said. “I think that helps me drive myself to be better as well. (The team) helped me to motivate myself and inspired me to create some of the menu items.”
Daily Staff Contributor Sophia Jayasekera can be reached at sophiaja@umich.edu.
