oro valley is not the epicenter of pima county fine dining. our community is older and perhaps less cuisine-savvy than for metro tucson (which has a thriving restaurant scene). we chose to live here... but we don't often eat here.
menu choices are reasonably diverse and fairly priced. what we found, however, was a lack of imagination or subtlety. a pretty good wine and beer list (dragoon ipa! yeah!) and again, reasonable prices, plus an all-day-sundays happy hour. in specific:
french onion soup: nicely done. the best of classic french onion is sweetened mostly from the natural caramelization of the onions, sometimes a touch of fortified wine is added (marsala for example). in this case i found the soup just a wee bit too "fortified", detracting from the natural wonderfulness of the onions. the soup base, however was excellent, and i'd give the soup an a-.
the main courses were not such a hit. we ordered a pork tenderloin dish with tomatoes, and duck breast with cherries. the cherries were described as "pickled", i guess this was accurate... but not pleasant. i want cherry sauce for duck to be soft and unctuous, sort of melting into the sauce. the sauce was scant and the cherries crunchy. a poor foil for duck. the pork was requested medium-rare/medium, the server cautioned that "because it was sliced thin", she couldn't guarantee it could be served that way - fair, except it'd be quite odd to slice pork tenderloin before cooking it. and no, it wasn't anywhere near medium rare.likewise, the duck breast. requested medium rare, came medium-well. the duck skin, a thing of culinary worship when prepared properly, was thick (1/4"?) and fatty. a lot of duck's flavor is conveyed in that fat; i ate it despite the textural unpleasantness, because without it the duck would have seemed both dry and overcooked. pity.
my wife's meal came with angel hair pasta. they seem to have forgotten to salt the water the pasta was cooked in. bland. pasta cooked without salt might as well be library paste, on a taste scale (to be honest, i was not one of the paste-eaters in elementary school, so this is assumed knowledge). that cappellini lacked any other flavor sauce-wise. we both love pasta, but neither ate it nor took it home. this from graduates and life-long participants in the "clean plate club"...
back to my plate: cherry tomatoes, haricot verte (actual baby green beans, not an attempt to impress you with french culinary terms), kale, and a slab of what was described as "sweet potato polenta". it wasn't bad. but the off-putting thing: everything (including the duck, of course, because they didn't render the skin properly) was oily. every part of the meal was lightly coated in oil. not dripping, just coated. had the lights not been dimmed, the shine could have blinded. yet, it was absent any other kind of seasoning (including salt) and a bit on the raw side of al dente, imo.
i'd still give harvest another try. they have mid-week specials including lamb shanks (hard to screw up) and half price bottles of wine. those two alone merit checking out. this is (i'm told) a family run restaurant, and i'm a big fan of that. but, to the boh: pay more attention to seasonings. taste the food. many things were drilled into me in culinary school, that one is etched in my psyche. wish you well, harvest.
fellow diners: come for the lamb.