Beloved Hilo chef Miyo Harumi remembered for decades of Japanese cooking

For nearly four decades, Miyo Harumi gave Hilo a place where Japanese homestyle cooking felt as familiar as a family kitchen. Her first name became synonymous with comfort food on the Big Island, and the restaurant she built outlived her own retirement, carrying her recipes, her standards and her reputation into another generation.

Harumi died June 3 at Pohai Malama Care Home in Hilo. She was 82. Born in Tokyo, she came to the United States in 1964 to study at San Jose State University, and her brother, Sango Harumi, said she began cooking for her American host family. People liked the Japanese food she served, he said, and that early response helped set the course for a career that moved from California to Hawai‘i and eventually made Hilo her home.

Before focusing on Miyo’s, Harumi had owned a small Mexican restaurant in San Francisco. She later opened Japanese restaurants there, then moved to Hawai‘i in the 1980s, first to Honolulu and then to Hilo. In 1987, she opened Miyo’s at Waiakea Villas, where she built a loyal following around simple, authentic dishes that became part of family meals, celebrations and everyday routines.

When Harumi moved Miyo’s in 2012, she did so after years of persistent infrastructure problems at Waiakea Villas. The new home at Manono Marketplace was designed as a 2,800-square-foot restaurant that could seat 92 people, not including sidewalk tables. Harumi said at the time that many of her original customers were already in their 80s, but still kept coming. She kept growing most of the lettuce for the restaurant on her own property in Waiakea Uka, a detail that fit the hands-on approach that defined the business. The new dining room featured custom woodworking, mango-wood seating, water features and artwork by local craftsmen.

The restaurant’s legacy also passed through the kitchen staff. Louis Pauole said he washed dishes at Miyo’s for three months before he was allowed to wait tables. He later became head chef and eventually owner, taking over after Harumi retired in 2019. Pauole later opened Izakaya Miyo during the COVID-19 pandemic because Miyo’s older clientele was reluctant to dine out.

Harumi’s influence reached well beyond regular customers. Friends and former residents remembered her as a role model, and one local artist said Harumi was like a second mother. At Manono Marketplace, her name remained attached to a business still serving Japanese homestyle cooking from family recipes she created herself, a lasting marker of how one chef helped shape Hilo’s food culture for decades.