At fine dining places, local fruits and crops are often shunned in favor of imported products, but at Tandem, they show guests how great these harvests can be
I was kind of expecting a more definitive answer when I asked young couple (both in business and in real life) Alex Tan and Mikee Lopez the kind of cuisine they feature in Tandem, their very first restaurant located in Makati. Italian, I initially thought, since they opened Manila Pasta during the pandemic, a brand that delivered fresh pasta and sauces to people’s homes. Or, based on their work experience, perhaps somewhere in the sphere of European. Instead, it is eclectic, says Tan.
“It is our default because, honestly, it’s what we enjoy cooking the most. Random, delicious food, with a lot of thought, technique and innovation. We didn’t make it cuisine-based because people already have their own notions of cuisine.” He adds,
“We also don’t have specific training in those areas. Neither of us are experts in Filipino, French, Chinese, American or whatever. And there are so many fantastic restaurants that already champion a single cuisine, and they do it so well.”
The two had dipped their toes in a number of things, from private dining to consultancy. Opening their own restaurant had always been on the back burner. But when the dining scene bounced back after the recent global health crisis, they finally went for it.
Mastery of techniques
“Our perspective toward cooking is very universal,” Tan says. “We believe that the most fundamental cooking techniques aren’t cuisine-based—braising in French is braising in China is braising in Australia. It’s all the same, and the only thing that is different is familiarity with ingredients. So our mastery and focus are really on techniques, how we want the end product to be, and what we need to do to ingredients in order to reach that optimal end goal.”
Given this, the theme for their maiden menu couldn’t have been more fitting—top crops of the Philippines. And it’s perfectly in line with their advocacy to be plant-forward.
During the pandemic, Tan’s sister started working directly with local farmers. She shifted her bus business into a small fruit-selling one. And seeing its potential and the opportunity to feature people who are incredibly undervalued and underappreciated for the noble job that they do further fueled the couple’s drive to put the spotlight on vegetables.
“Their products are often dismissed in fine dining in places for more exorbitant and imported products, and that’s a perspective we want to change by showing guests how great some of these basic things are,” he says.
Kitchen experiments
Their multicourse menu had gone through a lot of iterations to reach that final version they are proud to serve. The potato dish, for instance, started out as a potato fondant that’s accompanied by a mussel salad, espuma, ikura and potato chicharron. The consistency of the cook proved to be an issue for the potato—sometimes it came out too hard, sometimes mushy. And so they had to adjust their processes and continue their kitchen experiments until they ended up with a gnocchi, which guests eventually had an overwhelmingly positive response to.
It was the same for the corn dish, which originally was in the form of a tortilla, but it dried out under the heat lamp so they decided to turn it into corn chips instead. It was complemented by a sweet corn purée, braised pork belly and popped sorghum.
Other featured crops include onion that has been turned into a dumpling filled with caramelized onions and mushroom, tomato in varying forms (pickled, powdered, smoked, granita) with pesto and compressed watermelon, eggplant that’s been smoked and made into a cappelletti, sweet potato as a bread course, and cabbage that’s been puréed, charred and fried and served with wagyu striploin.
Keeping in sync with the thought of their menu, the chefs decided to feature the country’s top fruits for desserts—pineapple sorbet with coconut gelée, calamansi curd on a meringue cookie, mango bar with smoked sugar, and banana chocolate truffle.
“It’s intelligent, responsible, sustainable, zero waste, locally sourced and a delicious kind of food,” describes Tan. And I do agree, as much thought has been injected into the food, not just in the way it is treated and prepared, but also how ingredients were gathered.
It may have taken some time for the couple to find their very own playground. Even so, the promise they have shown earlier on is not lost and is now on full display in the sandbox that is Tandem. INQTandem is located on the ground floor of Greenbelt Hamilton, 151 Legaspi St., Legazpi Village, Makati. They’re open Tuesday to Sunday and have two seatings per night.
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Angelo Comsti writes the Inquirer Lifestyle column Tall Order. He was editor of F&B Report magazine.
