‘I lost the passion.’ Why a longtime Gig Harbor restaurateur pulled the plug.

In 1982, Kirby Tweten built a restaurant on a vacant lot alongside state Route 16 at the top of the hill that leads down into Gig Harbor.

It was a good location, and he thought the restaurant, which he called The Harvester, might do well there.

It did.

For 38 years, The Harvester has been a favorite gathering spot in Gig Harbor — not only for its cheese-and-bacon-laden comfort food, the coffee you could stand a spoon up in, the bloody Marys with the scrambled eggs — but for the people who worked there for nearly four decades.

“People say the restaurant is my legacy,” said Tweten, 68. “It’s not really. My legacy is the people who worked there. The kids who started out washing dishes and come in years later with their own kids for breakfast. People like Don Benoit, who came to us at 16 and retired as chef at 52. Amy Layton, the bar manager, who laughed and joked with everybody and was there for 20 years.”

Tweten started flipping burgers at his parent’s drive-in, Zesto’s in Seattle’s Rainier Valley, at the age of 12, and has been in the business ever since. His parents, Del and Gloria Tweten, later ran the Harvester in the Stadium District of Tacoma, so the Gig Harbor restaurant was a family affair.

But changing times and the disruption of the coronavirus caught up with the Harvester last month. Tweten closed the doors and hung up a sign that said, “We retired.” The building has been sold, and the new owner is looking for another occupant.

“I’ve had enough,” Tweten told The Gateway last week. “I lost my passion for it. It’s just not fun any more.”

It wasn’t just the pandemic, he said, though that made things worse. The business has changed.

“The old business model of the sit-down restaurant, where the value is in having someone welcome you and take your order and treat you nicely, I’m not sure that works any more,” he said. “The younger customers, they want their food fast, they take a picture of it with their phone, and they’re good.”

While it lasted, the Harvester was an institution.

“The fishermen would come every day for breakfast,” Tweten said. “There were always four or five of them, and they always took the same booth. The moms’ clubs would come on Friday, and then on Sundays, you’d get the groups after church. Birthday parties, kids on dates, all dressed up.”

Unpretentious menu

The menu was not for the weak of heart — or the cholesterol-challenged. Based on American standards, it was heavy on sauces, gravy, cheese and bacon.

Tweten imitated a customer’s growl: “I don’t want cottage cheese and tomato slices! Bring me biscuits and gravy.”

It was good honest food, and it was what the customers wanted, he said.

“It was a family restaurant, an unpretentious kind of place,” Tweten said. “It was food you understood and knew what it was. Nothing weird or fancy — bacon and eggs, pancakes, lunch sandwiches, fish and chips.”

Twenty years ago, he introduced eggs Benedict. “Back then, that was, ‘Ooooh! Fancy!’” he laughed. “Now, it’s a standard.”

Customers share stories

Last week, The Gateway asked readers to share some of their memories of The Harvester.

“I have so many stories,” said a longtime customer, Joni Baker. “From bringing my mom for breakfast during her dialysis to meeting my high school friends on the weekend, to where I meet my Aunt Chad and Uncle Jack, who were like my surrogate parents, for lunch and our fave cocktails in the lounge.”

Deb Morris said she used to take an elderly widower to The Harvester for breakfast.

“For about 8 years, I took this dear soul to The Harvester every other Tuesday. He always ordered the pancake sandwich,” Morris said. “We tried a few other places, but he was a creature of habit. I’m so sad to see them close.”

One of Chris Tubig’s first jobs while at Peninsula High School was as a dishwasher at The Harvester.

“It taught me a lot, gave me the opportunity to work hard and created some lasting memories,” Tubig said. “... the cheesy bread — I don’t know how much of that I ate.”

Even as a dishwasher, he said, he enjoyed “watching quietly from the corner as cooks and waitstaff hashed it out over the counter. The joking and camaraderie, the simple but hard work that we shared, the innocent flirting and the relationships that sprang up, it is all part of the story.”

Tubig remembers particularly a line cook named Craig Cobean: “The largest human being I have ever encountered. He had a personality and a laugh that would fill the room.”

Despite his size, Cobain, who died in 2011, was “one of the most kind and gentle human beings I have ever known. He loved to laugh and goof around and would just about do anything to help out anyone around him.”

That was part of The Harvester’s secret, Tweten says.

No big rule book

“It was a fun place to work. It wasn’t corporate. There was no big rule book you had to follow. Everybody got along and helped each other out,” Tweten says. “That’s why we had so many people who had been there 15, 20 years.”

Sometimes, more than friendships were formed. One of Tweten’s sons, Andrew, married the daughter of Kim Reisen, a longtime waitress.

After closing the restaurant June 30, Tweten said, he helped everyone find new jobs. Amy, from the lounge, is going to Arizona. Most everybody else found work locally.

As for himself, Tweten plans to travel. He lost his wife, Paulie, three years ago. She was a teacher at Harbor Ridge Middle School, and he sometimes found himself hiring her former students. But he’s made a new acquaintance, a woman from Port Orchard who was also in the restaurant business. She’s a widow, too.

“She understands,” he said. “About October, when it starts to pour, we plan to travel around a bit.”

Tweten says he has only one remaining regret.

“Now I’m going to have to find a new place for breakfast.”

This story was originally published August 9, 2021 at 5:36 PM.