Bear’s fresh food eatery

Bear's Eatery is voted one of Kimberley's best breakfast spots

Barry "Bear" Pearce and Janet "JJ" Johanson are owner/operators of Bear's Eatery in Kimberley, B.C. — Photo courtesy of J. Johansen

Janet "JJ" Johanson and Barry "Bear" Pearce have revamped and redecorated the former Mary’s Kitchen in Kimberley, B.C., into a cozy and attractive diner. Bear’s Eatery has pretty blue walls that feature a changing gallery of LP record covers—evidence of JJ and Bear’s love of music. The background music is an easy-listening mix, encouraging guests to linger just a little—and there’s plenty of reason to linger when the food is this good. Fresh and made from scratch, the menu items include wonderful soups, pot pies and standard fare with a few twists.

“I’d like to encourage visitors to come in, to eat where the locals eat,” Johanson said. “We do home-cooked meals, with fresh everything, and people are loving it.”

Interview with Bear’s Eatery co-owner Janet "JJ" Johanson

Do you think that breakfast is what you do best? We only do breakfast on weekends, so winning an award in that category is a real compliment. We do a good, generous breakfast—you have to try our “Bear” pancakes and our Ukrainian breakfast platter with perogies.

What’s your personal favourite menu item? Whew! There are a lot. I love our pizza, our pot pies, our soups, our fantastic salads—I can’t say just one thing. Bear makes everything from scratch, and it’s all so good!

Can you tell me what’s behind the use of album covers as decor? Bear and I are huge music fans. From the time we were kids, we bought albums for our collections, and we’ve been lugging them around for years. It came to me one day that the album covers were art, and that I should display them. So that’s how our album wall came to be. I have over a thousand albums, so I change them up all the time.

What kind of background music do you play in the restaurant? Well, we sometimes have live music—like for the Father’s Day weekend we had a singer/musician playing in the background. Otherwise, we have a pretty good mix of easy-listening music—some blues, some swing, Frank Sinatra, a little bit of country. What you won’t hear is rap or opera!