Yes, I bought a restaurant! No, it was never a thought or plan in my entire life. Yet, here I am. I was supposed to be retired and should have faded away from the public. But I took a major detour and ended up on a path I would have never bet on.
I know a little bit about sushi. Imura Restaurant gave me that ability. But running a whole restaurant, learning all the house recipes in the kitchen, and memorizing the menu and how each dish is created, plated, and served. And of course, personnel, administrative duties of being an owner, budget, vendors, and community involvement is a task not for the meek.
On top of all that, Miyuki’s building has a long history of being haunted. Miyuki started about 1978 and has not changed much. The menu and most of its staff have remained the same since the start. I am only the 4th owner in its storied history.
As employees became aware of my extracurricular activities with ghost hunting many of them started to share personal experiences of their own encounters with ghosts within the walls of Miyuki.
Their stories were consistent with some of my experiences at Miyuki. And, bringing in my ghost hunting partner, Psychic and Medium Cherie, further confirmed the stories. Some of the hauntings are typical of haunted places: doors opening, lights flickering, objects being moved, shadow figures etc…
But first, check out some of the house made dishes that are unique to Miyuki’s legacy.
The Sashimi Deluxe
The former owner and master sushi chef, Chris Ishikawa, continues to be mentor & consultant, chef, and friend at Miyuki. This platter is one of his signature dishes. Our fish is delivered every other day and is some of the freshest in the region.
House Made Gyoza
Our Gyoza is made fresh daily in house. The pork filling is a Miyuki recipe, like all our other recipes. The Gyoza is steamed or deep fried and comes with a house made Gyoza sauce. It is a labor of love for us.
Scallop Dynamite
Our scallop dynamite is another “made in house” dish. It has a nice jalapeno and serrano pepper kick to it. This delectable is baked in a half oyster shell and served with our house made teriyaki sauce.
Chawan Mushi
Made fresh every order, our Chawan Mushi is hands down the best in the region. It has a velvety soft egg custard with our house made dashi. But pack your patience. This dish takes about 20 minutes to complete the order.
Japanese Ramen
Our Wednesday Night Special
We are the only game in all of Watsonville when it comes to Japanese Ramen. We make our soft eggs the day before serving to marinate them in a sauce for 24 hours. Our broth is Tonkatsu Shoyu with dashi. Our toppings are braised pork belly, fish cake, green onion, wood ear mushrooms, seaweed, bamboo shoots, soft boiled egg, and shredded red pepper. The perfect hot noodle soup for those cold winter nights! Come get it every Wednesday Night.
If you are not into eating fish raw or cooked, we offer a variety of non-fish dishes. Here are a few of them. We make our own Tamago in house. It’s basically a Japanese egg omelet on the sweet side. And we serve beef and chicken teriyaki. Our beef is premium rib eye steak and our chicken is a combination of breast and thigh meat which makes the chicken moist and tasty. Our teriyaki sauce is house made as well.
Simple Food That Tastes Great
We keep all our sushi rolls simple. It’s a Miyuki philosophy: Simple food that tastes great! Our most popular rolls are the Dragon roll and the California roll. Our Cali roll is unique. It has imitation crab and real crab mixed together. The taste is amazing. Our signature roll is the Dragon roll: shrimp & string bean tempura inside, Unagi (eel) and avocado on top with a drizzle of sweet sauce.
Some Other Tasty Dishes
Our clam soup and hand rolled salmon skin are two of my favorites.
Our oyster shooters are legendary. When customers come to Miyuki to celebrate their day or to celebrate with their friends and family, oyster shooters are a common occurrence!
Quail egg, oyster, ponzu sauce, a squirt of sake! And a few other things thrown in for good measure…it goes down like Goldfish.
Lingering Souls Paranormal
I rarely investigate a new place without Lingering Souls Paranormal. Cherie and Rick Pruitt, the Founders of LSP, have been there for me every step of my journey. Bringing Cherie’s psychic and medium abilities into my restaurant changes the dynamics of the atmosphere in the building.
This building is already energized with spirits, but when the spirits know Cherie is going to arrive, the energy ramps up! The place electrifies with a lot more paranormal activity in anticipation of her arrival.
Before her arrival, I gave her limited information about the hauntings here. And I left out minor details of my experience here, to see if she would encounter the same energy that I did.
The one story I heard the most from employees was about a little boy spirit that roams inside Miyuki. I heard the little boy likes to mess with equipment, open doors, and touch people, as well as show itself.
You would be surprised how Cherie described this particular entity. Watch the video clip below to find out.
Multiple Spirits Roam the Restaurant
The building has many spirits roaming around, as evident in this photo! At the front entrance near the host stand, we captured an entity hanging out at the front door and host stand.
We heard the rem pod activate at table 6, so we pointed the SLS Cam at table 6 and we captured an entity standing by the table. It was playing with the rem pod.
Cherie was seeing and feeling multiple entities traveling through our office space. One of which we captured on the SLS Cam standing next to Cherie. The blue arrows are Cherie. The red arrows was the entity. Some of the spirits don’t like the refrigeration unit in the office. And she said they open the frig door all the time to state their dislike of the frig. The frig door is found open several times a day. I never told Cherie about that frig door.
The Doppleganger
Recently one night after closing, myself and two employees were getting ready to leave the restaurant for the night. I was checking the nightly receipts with one employee, who I will refer to as employee 1 (female), at a dining table. Employee 2 (male) was cleaning the service area. As we finished our receipt check we both looked over to E-2, who was opening the hallway door leading to the restrooms and watched him walk in, presumably to shut down the lights inside each restroom.
E-1 and I waited by the hallway door for him. He did not come out right away so we decided to wait for him outside in the back patio. As we stood there, she asked me if I saw him walk in to the hallway. I said yes, I did. We stood there a couple more seconds and both heard a vehicle start up across the street from the back patio. She looked at me and said, “I think that’s his car starting up.”
She walked back into the restaurant and went into the restroom hallway to check on him. He was not in any of the restrooms. She came back outside and walked to the running vehicle only to find him standing there at the car.
The only way to exit the restaurant at night is either the back patio door or the back kitchen door. Either way, we would have been able to see and hear him exit from where we were standing.
The next day I talked to E-2 alone. He claimed he opened the hallway door to visually check if the lights were off and never made entry. He said after he did the quick visual check, he walked out the back patio door and went directly to his car to start it up. He told me he was waiting for us to exit the building because he was giving E-1 a ride home.
At the moment we saw E-2 enter the hallway, was that a doppelganger? Did he continue to walk outside as he claimed? E-1 and I independently saw him physically open the hallway door and enter through the doorway. We never saw him exit the back patio door. I was not able to come to a conclusion except that it was unexplainable.
This was the first time I had seen a full bodied, solid looking apparition, inside the restaurant since I took ownership. One other employee has witnessed a full apparition inside the restaurant years ago. And that person described the apparition as a white ghostly figure and said his face was that of a young male adult.
The blue arrow in the photo leads to the back patio. The red arrow leads to the restroom hallway.
Miyuki is a traditional Japanese restaurant. The food is not fancy with flare! It is simple made food that tastes great! Most of it made from old family recipes of the original owner. We still use and practice those cooking methods to this day.
Owning Miyuki was meant to be. It was my destiny without knowing it. Food, travel, and ghost hunts have been who I am these past few years! It makes sense to me now that I would unknowingly become owner and chef of a local iconic restaurant that was haunted!
Most of the spirits that pass through Miyuki are transient. They come and go through a portal discovered inside the restaurant. But there are a few that are permanent residents of Miyuki. I have made peace with those residents and they accept me as the new owner. They are allowing me to coexist with them peacefully. They protect the building and land and I preserve the traditions of Miyuki.
Our website is under construction, but you can find us on Facebook and Instagram under the name Miyuki.
Miyuki Restaurant is located at: 452 E. Lake Ave. Watsonville, Ca. (831) 728-1620.
Our hours: We are closed every Monday. Tuesday through Friday Lunch: 1130am to 1:30pm. Tuesday through Friday Dinner: 5pm to 9pm. Saturday we are open for dinner only from 5pm to 9pm. Sunday we open for dinner only from 4:30pm to 8:30pm.
Until next time on Foodie Booze Explorer…
Interesting. I Wii have to talk to the son of the people who owned Popo’s Mexican restaurant before it became Miyuki and see if he or his family experienced any paranormal activity.
Let me know what you find out!
Love the posts Paul! And that Saba sashimi looks amazing! Can’t wait to read the next adventure.
Thank you!