Z Harvest Cafe

Z Harvest Café
The Good, the Bad and the Decidedly Ugly
Rating: **
(Five stars is a perfect score.)

Visit Z Harvest Café when you want to dine in a chic yet cozy space, choose from fantastically prepared soups, salads, sandwiches, pasta and entrees each more wonderful than the next, and then work yourself up into a raging frenzy of irritation and insult.

My Z Harvest experiences have been going on for years…perhaps the owners and I need to attend some sort of relationship therapy. My husband and I discovered the café shortly after it opened. Wow! We were impressed. Crisp Italian breadsticks and real butter upon being seated, a great menu with choices for everyone, a view of the bistro style kitchen, a loaded dessert case filled with cheesecakes and cookies and the tinkling sound of jazzy funk piano playing in the back ground.

My husband’s salmon burger was perfect and the side of pasta salad was worth raving about all through the meal…and I did. Really…pasta, light vinaigrette, sugar snap peas, parmesan cheese, pine nuts and red pepper flakes…so delicious! I had a hot corned beef sandwich and could not believe so simple a sandwich could taste so good…One bite and I was transported back in time to my first corned beef sandwich at Mort’s Deli in Chicago. The meat was the perfect combination of salt and tang and the bread a grainy French peasant instead of the usual rye…surprisingly perfect. I should also mention my husband is the kind of guy who cannot have any meal (including breakfast) without a soda (Have we fallen from your good graces forever?). He was especially impressed when they served him Coke in those tiny glass bottles which he always insists taste better than fountain cola. Because of the size, he still maintains to this day that ordering five was not excessive.

We were so excited to finally find moderately priced good food made with fresh ingredients that we overlooked the ten minute wait to be seated (though there were empty tables) and the fifteen minute wait for our check (some sort of staff huddle was going on in the back). We raved on and on to our friends about our discovery and made plans to go back. Hmm…how did our raving turn to ranting?

Frankly, the service sucks. The servers are pleasant and try to accommodate, but there is clearly a breakdown on the owner/management level. We arrived to find the restaurant empty and yet we waited ten minutes to be seated. One of the owners indicated the person who seats customers would be with us shortly and went back to preparing (Prepping? The place was empty?) a salad. A wait person walked past and seemed uncomfortable seeing us still standing there and looked to the owner for guidance. The owner indicated (again) that someone would seat us in a moment and he seemed annoyed as he sighed deeply and called for “Mary.”

So determined were we to make this our favorite place, we just busied ourselves looking at the small section of French garden soaps, candies and gourmet potato chips. Clearly, the wait staff was not empowered to step into the host/hostess role even if they had no one to wait on. Finally, Mary, the other owner/hostess came from the back and sat us. Again, we enjoyed our meals (I had the best tuna salad of my life and my husband had a chicken breast grilled to perfection…no complaints about the food.) so we overlooked the long wait for our check and the fact that the owners were obsessively trying to hang fabric from the ceiling almost directly above our table. We left still endeared, but perhaps a bit less enchanted.

In the meantime, some of our friends checked the place out and agreed the food was great and the service was terrible. One of our friends never did receive the second coffee she ordered. When the owner walked by and my friend asked her if she could get that second cup, the owner glared at the wait person. Did I mention she never received the coffee?

We were at a party with other friends and began to talk about Z Harvest and everyone exchanged various horror stories about…yep, you guessed it…the owners! We agreed that this is the kind of business you hate to reward with financial support, but the food is just so damn good!

The last straw was when we decided to take my mother and in-laws there to celebrate my mother’s birthday. The salads are worth comment…fresh greens with apples, nuts, pears and a sweet dressing…my mother in-law had the other salad offered and got to enjoy the darkest of plump blackberries tossed with tender spinach in January! We were served absolutely fresh “makes you feel vital” kind of food as usual. Too bad it all went south from there. My mother in-law is not the culinary adventurer I am and had questions about the entrees, “what is in the sauce?” The wait person did not know and very nicely asked the owner (female) for some help. The owner was clearly irritated at having to answer questions as “obvious” as my mother in-law’s, but managed to spit out answers in such an unpleasant and condescending manner we were certain she took some pleasure in making us feel like a bunch of rubes.

Then, as the restaurant began to fill, it was apparent our table of five was a nuisance. I mean we had the unmitigated nerve to order salads and entrees…how much time were we going to have to hang around being pests when more important people needed to be seated? The owner could not hide exasperation behind her permanent frown when we took out our own cake (sugar-free—my father in law is diabetic) and ordered coffee dessert drinks to go with. I should tell you I called ahead and asked someone (apparently the wrong someone) if we could bring in a dessert since they had no sugar free offerings and we would be ordering a substantial amount of food…(no splitting of entrées for this clan, believe me). I was told it would not be a problem. I pity the poor employee who made such an egregious error, I suspect she must have been terminated or sentenced to some sort of “How Dare You Accommodate the Customer” prison camp. Anyway, the owner served our coffee herself and suggested we have paper cups since we would probably want our coffee to go. To go? After all, the Weidner Center show had just ended and they needed the table. To go? Paper cups and coffee to go after dinner for five? How considerate of her to offer.

Needless to say we left and this time we were not at all endeared. In fact, the bloom was so far off the carnation we didn’t think we would ever return. I wrote a letter explaining how troubling this type of consistently bad service was. I also indicated that it was not just us…sadly they were becoming known as a place with great food and lousy service. I wrote we had been their biggest fans, but it was getting hard to keep watching them lose. The owner called me and told me my letter (very nicely written and I assure you … kindly constructive…I’m serious…no joke.) had upset her terribly. She said it was just a terrible thing to read.

I felt bad, but pointed out it’s better to know when a customer is disappointed. She then complained about how she and her partner never have time off and they had no one they could rely on to leave in charge if they wanted to go somewhere. I listened and was very understanding…Glad to have written the letter because clearly she needed an outlet for her troubles. I explained that as a business owner myself, I understood the problems and it was never my intention to make her feel bad, only to point out the issues. I told her my husband and I wanted to return, we wanted to be customers but felt after eleven (no exaggeration) visits we had to stop spending our money there. I tried to make her feel better by insisting that we really did love the food. Do you see the problem here? It was a fifteen minute phone call and I did my best to make her feel better about my disappointment in the service? She offered me a gift certificate and said we could pick it up at any time. My husband and I never picked up the certificate because he decided to boycott the place entirely. I went along with the boycott until the lure of a good deli sandwich made me secretly try them again. Unfortunately, I met with the same bad service. In fact, it took twenty four minutes just to get someone to take my credit card so I could pay my bill. If my husband reads this he is going to say it serves me right…I’ve managed to keep him in the dark about crossing the boycott line. So much for couple’s unity…oh the secrets and lies!

Since my last visit in April, I’ve bumped into three people (all strangers) who just in conversation mentioned the bad service there! At Farmer’s Market I overheard a woman saying she wanted to make a salad similar to one she had at Z Harvest. Her friend said, “Hey, we made a deal never to go back there!” The woman sounded ashamed as said, “Oh I know, but it’s such good food!” I can relate.

My mother returned with a friend for lunch and was determined to have an enjoyable experience. When her dessert arrived differently than described and she pointed it out to the server, she was informed that if she “had just read the whole description” she would see it was served as described. My mother did get the dessert sheet, read further and saw that it was not served as described…no apologies were offered.

In summary: Great food, great décor, but the management has issues….

Go for the food and hope you get lucky with the service. The wait staff is almost always friendly, but they seem to be at the mercy of micro manager/owners. If you do go, please try the hibiscus flower water with lime and brown sugar…truly remarkable. I guess I’ll make my own. And soak up the trendy atmosphere; the owners have a real knack for decorating and a great sense of style.


Z Harvest Cafe
2475 University Ave
Green Bay 54302 • 920-468-1685
Mon-Tue 11am-3pm, Wed-Sat 11am-9pm

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