Misaki Restaurant Struggling One Month After Accident

Adedamola Agboola

Business had been good at Misaki, Irene Yoshimizu said, until the early morning hours of Feb. 9 when a car turning onto Plandome Road hit an ice patch in the middle of the intersection, lost control and ploughed through the Japanese eatery’s front window.  

Since then,  Yoshimizu said, she has seen sales dwindle at her 411 Plandome Road restaurant hampered by a still unrepaired window.

“It’s been over a month and the window hasn’t been repaired,” Yoshimizu said.

The damaged window at Misaki is covered by plywood with “OPEN” spray painted on it.

Yoshimizu said her customers think she closed up.

Yoshimizu, who has operated the Plandome Road restaurant for 18 years, said building owner Anthony Branchinelli is responsible for fixing the window.

Branchinelli, reached by phone, acknowledged responsibility for making the repairs but said he isn’t responsible for the delay.

“I don’t know much about it. I have sent all the details to my architect and he’s taking care of it,” Branchinelli said.

Yoshimizu said the landlord told her a week the after accident that he had filed for a permit with the Town of North Hempstead to repair the windows. 

According to the North Hempstead’s permits office, as of March 10 no permits had been filed.

Yoshimizu said she considered doing the repairs herself, but does not have the money to do so.

She said she thinks Branchinelli is trying to renovate the whole building and doesn’t want to go through the hassle of paying for the repairs.

Branchinelli declined to comment about renovations to his building.

“I don’t know what to tell you. Why don’t you speak with the owners of Misaki. It’s their restaurant,” Branchinelli said.

Yoshimizu said she also asked the landlord to reduce the rent till the windows got repair but he declined.

She said when she got to work on the morning of the accident she found her restaurant cordoned off by police with Branchinelli waiting for her.

“The store was a little cold in the first couple of days and we had to close,” Yoshimizu said. “But you can’t close for too long because people will think you’re closed permanently.”

David Paterson, a resident who posted the thread about the restaurant on Facebook said he had been going to the restaurant since he moved to the area in 1999.

“I poked my head in there and there was nobody in and I think a lot of people thought it was closed,” Paterson said.

Yoshimizu said even without the damage to her storefront Plandome Road is generally a tough place to have a restaurant.

“A lot of movie customers don’t come anymore. It’s so slow. It’s terrible,” Yoshimizu said of the Bow Tie theater across the street from the restaurant.

Saturday and Sundays are usually peak days for Misaki, Yoshimizu said, but over the past month said she hasn’t been seeing customers. 

Yoshimizu who currently resides in Bayside, Queens immigrated to the United States from Hong Kong in 1990 with her mother when she was 25 years old. 

She met her Japanese husband, who is a chef at Misaki, and they got married.

They bought out Inaka, a Chinese restaurant on Plandome Road to open Misaki after years of working in restaurants in Port Washington and Great Neck.

Yoshimizu said business was good for the first 10 years but things began changing after the economic recession.

“It’s personal economics and school taxes and property taxes,” she said. “I understand why people are not coming out to eat anymore.”

Yoshimizu said until Branchinelli repairs the front window she is going to try to deliver to any residents in a two-mile radius of her restaurant.

But she doesn’t believe that is a long-term solution.

“I just want it fixed as soon as possible,” Yoshimizu said. “If we continue like this, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

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