12-03-2025
This beloved Tacoma restaurant has new owners. If you haven't noticed, that's a good thing
Over the Moon Cafe, perhaps Tacoma's most romantic restaurant and one of its smallest with just 36 oft-filled seats, quietly changed hands last year. If you hadn't noticed — and Over the Moon is the kind of place that some people return to several times in a year to celebrate — owners new and old did their part. Unrecognizable transition was very much the point, explained founder Deanna Harris-Bender in a February phone call.
Importantly, it was part of the paperwork, but 'I really wanted these guys to be successful,' she said. 'Sometimes when people hear about these things, they tend to shy away until the dust settles. I didn't want to do them any disfavors.'
Both parties agreed to refrain from making an official announcement until the timing seemed right.
'I guess the cat's out of the bag!' said Daniel Espinosa, who purchased the Opera Alley haunt with his wife Jennifer, in a recent phone call.
'We didn't want anybody to know, especially when Over the Moon has been a staple in the community for the last 23 years,' he explained. 'My fear was for patrons to get notified that the restaurant had been sold off, after building an emotional connection with Deanna, and for them to be like, 'Well, there goes Over the Moon.''
People have a penchant for viewing change in a negative light, he added, at least when it comes to something as intimate as a restaurant — maybe even more so for one with such a hearty reputation as a date-night haven and an anniversary dinner magnet, or celebration of any size or style, for almost a quarter-century.
Espinosa has worked as a chef and in corporate food management for just as long: 'I've been a chef for 23 years now. It's all I've done since I was a teenager, and I never thought about owning a restaurant or opening one, to be quite honest. If I did … it would have to be one that was a sweetheart of the town.'
He and Jennifer moved to Puyallup several years ago. In casual conversation with a barista at a coffee shop, they asked for recommendations on weekend activities in the area.
'She said, 'Oh my gosh, you have to try the cutest little spot in Tacoma. It's called Over the Moon Cafe,'' recalled Espinosa.
He perused the menu online — common for a chef but also his personal needs as a person with Celiac disease. Indeed, Harris-Bender's menu has somewhat surreptitiously catered to gluten-free diners for more than a decade. She herself is not Celiac, but after a lengthy battle, she was finally diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which led her to the Autoimmune Paleo Diet. Over the Moon has eschewed labels, instead allowing the dishes to speak for themselves. It's why the house lasagna, assembled with thinly sliced butternut squash, is listed in quotation marks and why the berry cheesecake-meets-mousse dessert has a paragraph-long description. (The secret, sort of: coconut butter and ground dates!)
So the Espinosas made a reservation. Almost immediately, 'We kinda looked at each other,' said Daniel Espinosa. The food was great, the service kind and attentive, the ambiance just wonderful. 'We became regulars.'
Soon they had celebrated birthdays including their daughter's 18th, their own anniversary and just your usual date night.
'When we found out it was for sale, it was an immediate yes,' said Espinosa.
The new owners trained with Harris-Bender for a few months, while the longtime sous chef, Michael, moved into a leading role. Harris-Bender eventually dipped out, but her daughter, who served and managed the front-of-house for many years, stayed through last October before returning to school and moving to the East Coast. Her son still works in the kitchen.
'My kids grew up there,' said Harris-Bender. 'It was a bit heartwrenching, but there's a shelf life, right? That's what it felt like for me … It's a young person's game. Small restaurants are exhausting! They just are.'
When she opened Over the Moon in 2001, she was in her 40s. She now recognizes that time in her life as 'my midlife crisis,' she said with a laugh. It was her first ownership adventure but a return to the kitchen after working in restaurants as a teenager before moving into the legal field and running a home-based business for a spell. As her kids grew up, she started searching for the answer to a question some know early and others maybe never find: 'What do I really want to do when I grow up?'
Tacoma, she continued, 'was in such a cool place' at that time. Primo Grill had just opened, a truly seasonal, local, chef-driven restaurant. (That mainstay also recently was sold to new, younger owners.)
Over the Moon has likewise withstood the tests of time, garnering a loyal fan base and a reputation as a must-visit for out-of-towners, too. The COVID-19 pandemic definitely complicated its future, as Harris-Bender, now in her mid-60s, began contemplating her next steps. She and her husband are avid pilots; they have since moved to Sequim, from where they now frequently take off in a Cessna 180 Skywagon, nicknamed JulietLima. (In July, she and a friend will compete in the 2025 Air Race Classic against 50 other women, flying from Washington to Alabama. The nonprofit race was established in 1929 and supports women in flight.)
The restaurant was for sale for almost two years, but none of the offers seemed right. You hope to find buyers like the Espinosas, said Harris-Bender — who appreciate what you built and want to carry the torch, not tear it down.
Astute observers might have noticed an unusual Instagram post just before Memorial Day last year. At first blush it was a restaurant-anniversary post, but it featured Harris-Bender, who didn't post frequently and rarely was in front of the camera.
'I kept all your notes — years and years of notes: 23 years of your experiences, your joys, your thoughts, your prayers. Business cards from businesses come and gone,' she said. 'It's amazing that Tacoma and beyond created this, in this little hole in the wall, and I love all that you guys have brought to me personally, to my crew, and to all the guests that come in and get to read your notes and look at your silly pictures. Thanks for sharing with us, all of this, all of these years, and here's to 23 more.'
It was actually a goodbye, admitted Harris-Bender when I spoke with her earlier this year.
The love-note tradition began organically, as guests started scribbling on napkins or an old receipt in their wallet and slipping it into a decorative box on one table. That box became several and the notes overflowing.
'To me it was always such an authentic piece of people that came into the restaurant … because that's really what I intended for the restaurant to be,' said Harris-Bender. 'When people get what you're trying to do, it's an amazing kind of feeling. It was about the food, but it was very much about just having a safe place for people to come and just be authentic.'
The Espinosas have enacted few changes. The biggest might be the menu layout itself — now just one page instead of several, but featuring a similar number and variety of dishes with some new additions such as angel-hair arrabitata and prosciutto di Parma with burrata and pickled cantaloupe. Most of all, said Daniel, the 'same incredible ambiance' is here to stay.
▪ 709 Opera Alley (Court C), Tacoma, 253-284-3722,
▪ Tuesday-Thursday 4:30-8:30 p.m., Friday-Saturday 4:30-9:30 p.m.
▪ Details: new owners at Opera Alley mainstay, reservations recommended
