Harvest Moon restaurant sold; find out what new owners plan for downtown favorite
Everyone, relax, the Neil’s Toss Salad isn’t going anywhere. Neither is the Crab Deluxe or the Dinah Burger.
All the menu favorites will live on because Harvest Moon restaurant has been sold to new owners who want to continue its legacy and keep longtime owner Mark Smallwood’s recipes. The downtown Modesto restaurant closed at the start of August, and Smallwood put the business up for sale later in the month with plans to retire.
Two Modesto friends and business partners will now own and run the restaurant, known affectionately as “The Moon” by its fans. Marilyn Prescott, 32, and Jessie Wiggins, 38, both Realtors with RE/MAX, had talked about opening some kind of restaurant together in the past and then saw the news about Harvest Moon being for sale.
Modesto native Prescott went to school with Smallwood’s son and her ex-husband’s first job was as a dishwasher at the restaurant. Wiggins, a Georgia native, said the restaurant has been a favorite of hers since moving to Modesto 11 years ago. Before going into real estate she had more than a dozen years of restaurant experience.
“We want to keep it the same great place it has always been, just give it a little love and a face-lift,” said Prescott, who sat for an interview recently with Wiggins and Smallwood about the sale.
Recipes, staff coming back to Harvest Moon
They plan to reopen the restaurant keeping its name, its recipes and much of its staff exactly the same. That includes the head cook and many of the front-of-house staff. You might even spot Smallwood from time to time, since he has agreed to consult and help them through the transition. He said he fielded about 20 offers, but Prescott and Wiggins were the best fit to run the restaurant and help it thrive.
“The two of them, they’re both all in and have a good working relationship already to make a solid team,” Smallwood said. “I’m glad they’re going to be true to the Moon. Now I want the people who loved me at the restaurant to love them, and if they didn’t love me they can love them instead. I want the people of Modesto to support them.”
Prescott and Wiggins plan to make full use of the two-story building, setting up their real estate office upstairs in what was largely storage space previously, and then running the downstairs restaurant. The site will remain closed through September for some painting and refreshing.
New owners changing look inside and out
Once it reopens, expect a new look inside and out. That will include a greatly expanded outdoor patio, perfect for our current coronavirus social-distanced reality. The exterior seating will be extend along the sidewalk to the end of the building and then warp around to its 13th Street-facing parking area.
That’s the same wall that will have a new enormous black-and-white mural they’ve had commissioned. When finished, the patio will be able to seat about 60, basically tripling its outside seating and even more than its interior capacity of 48.
The women are also leaning into the “moon” motif, and including their own wolf imagery as a personal touch. They plan to change the logo to a moon with a wolf in homage to their company name, Two Wolves LLC, which they say stands for them as “two mama wolves.” Prescott’s children are ages 14 and 5 and Wiggins has a 12-year-old at home.
The exterior will be painted gray and inside they’ll paint as well as create a larger cut-through window to open up the bar area to the main dining area. Once Stanislaus County has dropped its COVID-19 infection rate enough to reopen inside dining, they plan to host parties and do caterings as well. Down the road they also plan to add a few new items to the menu with a Southern flare because the women’s families comes from Georgia, Texas and Louisiana.
If all goes according to plan, they’ll reopen to the public Oct. 1. To start they’ll keep the restaurant’s current hours for breakfast and lunch only, and then in about a month expand back to dinner service. Smallwood cut back to only daytime hours in fall of 2018.
“It’s going to be the same great food and the same great taste,” Wiggins said.
Smallwood, already proving his consulting skills, chimed in, “But now with a much better attitude.”
This story was originally published August 30, 2020 at 5:30 AM.
