Chocolate and charm infuse every corner of this new midtown restaurant

When a new spot opens in town, we’re eager to check it out, let you know our initial impressions, share photos and dish about menu items. First Taste, as the name implies, is not a full-blown review but instead a peek inside restaurants that have just opened – an occasion to sample a few items and satisfy curiosities (both yours and ours).

The fireplace roars outside of Tandy’s on a recent crisp night. It’s hard not to pull up a patio chair and settle in by the inviting stone hearth, nestled in the neatly manicured garden that faces Osborn Road, and soak up the rare cool evening air.

Instead, we make our way to the entrance. What Tandy Peterson is working on inside the ambling home-turned-restaurant is even more comforting.

Walking into the chef’s titular restaurant feels like arriving at a casual house party just getting underway. A host stationed outside the front door offers a warm smile, then guides us past the petite wood-paneled bar and lounge to a warm, farmhouse-style dining room. 

Neatly arranged wooden tables and chairs offer views into an open kitchen where chefs quietly knock out dishes.

Opposite the kitchen, on the other side of the dining room, Peterson has carved out a space for the culinary business that’s been her focus for the last five years: Embers Chocolate. Bars are neatly lined up on a long island while a grinder quietly hums on a table behind the finished sweets, slowly gristing cacao. Candy bar sleeves from fellow chocolatiers span these walls, forming a colorful cascading wallpaper.

Depending on your vantage, Tandy’s can serve as both dinner and a show. If that sounds familiar, it’s because this twee bungalow played host to Kevin Binkley’s eponymous fine dining restaurant and the unfortunately brief, elevated iteration of The Larder & The Delta. Despite a new coat of creamy white paint on the wainscoting and freshly sanded floorboards, there are reminders of that past, from the same elegant platters and plates to the warm, precise service. 

When Peterson took over the little house on Osborn Road, she understood that history intimately. The chef is a Binkley alumna who reveres the space. She worked for the James Beard Award winner first at Cafe Bink and rose through the ranks of Binkley’s restaurant group before departing to revamp The Phoenician’s Italian restaurant Il Terrazzo into Mowry & Cotton. Yet, she’s not letting the space’s past define how she charts the future. 

Peterson set out to create the kind of place she loves to frequent: a cozy all-day cafe. She opened Tandy’s in December, first offering breakfast, lunch and a blend of cafe and cocktail sips. The following month, the restaurant expanded to brunch and dinner service.

Peterson built the menu as a sum of her experiences, highlighting dishes she’s made or loved throughout her career. Chocolate, the newest ingredient in the chef’s quiver, offers diners a salient throughline across a meal at Tandy’s.

Order Tandy’s knockout negroni

Local barman, Maxwell Berlin, crafted Tandy’s classic-leaning cocktail menu. From the taut list, we select the 5 C’s Clover Club and Chocolate Negroni to start ($17 each). The vodka-based 5C’s Clover Club uses both cacao and citrus, the latter of which was grown by Binkley, Berlin shared. The frothy quaff pops first with the floral tartness of raspberry, Meyer lemon and Lillet, while housemade creme de cacao adds an earthy depth.

The Chocolate Negroni may just be the city’s best riff of this popular Italian cocktail. In Berlin’s version, gin is plussed up with the subtle sweetness of juicy strawberries and cacao, which offers a hint of warmth. Those elements soften the tipple’s bitterness a bit without overpowering the quintessential negroni flavor delivered by vermouth and amari. The garnish, a chocolate-dipped candied orange slice, is a tiny treat in its own right.

Later, we opt for a Spanish G&T ($16). On its face, the classic two-ingredient drink isn’t the most enticing on Tandy’s cocktail menu. One sip of the refreshing lemongrass-and-lime-leaf-spiked tipple shows the error of that thinking. Served in a bulbous wine glass, the drink comes loaded with chunks of frozen coconut water and fruit. As that melts, the tropical flavors add nuance.

Cheffy twists on comfort food

During dinner, Tandy’s serves a selection of appetizers, salads, a “chef’s whim” soup and a well-edited selection of entrees and sides.

The Cacao Bread is a must among the starters. The clover-shaped brown bread is baked with cacao, orange blossom and espresso. Candied cacao nibs stud the accompanying honey butter. Though it sounds like the makings of a dessert, the nuttiness of the bread and bright, bitter notes of espresso and orange give each bite levity. This is not only one of the most interesting and thoughtful bread services in town, but at $11, it’s also astoundingly one of the more reasonably priced.

In Tandy’s Southwestern Caesar ($14), the kitchen riffs on the ever-popular salad, tossing gem lettuce in a vibrant, luscious cilantro-lime dressing with paper-thin slices of piquant pickled red onion and shavings of salty Parmesan. The salad gets a bit of added kick from ancho focaccia croutons. This plate could easily be a meal, especially with the optional addition of chicken or salmon. 

Tandy’s entrees include a mix of homey, rustic classics, such as chicken and dumplings and a braised pork shank served with tortillas, and “of course a mole,” the menu reads. We order mole black beans and Brussels sprouts to accompany our mains.

Peterson herself brings these plates to the table, taking the lid off a tiny enameled cast-iron pot holding the chicken and dumplings ($22). The chef twirls it with a flourish, whipping the escaping steam into a small, aromatic tornado. Peterson takes inspiration for this dish from one she grew up making with her mom and sister. As a private chef, she’d pull out this dish when clients wanted, as she puts it, “a hug in a cup.”

The challenge of a menu that leans homey and casual is that the thought, “I could make this at home,” can interrupt a meal. Those thoughts quickly quiet themselves upon your first bite.

A bright, creamy velouté (a French mother sauce akin to pan gravy) is the velvety foundation of this entrée. Tender chicken, toothsome carrots and peas nestle into that sauce alongside dense dumplings. In classically slow-cooked dishes like this, flavors can become muddy and muted. Tandy’s version is fresh and vibrant. The base sauce blooms with an acerbic verve that’s laced with thyme and sage.

One side dish that fell short is the restaurant’s Brussels sprouts. They’re halved and cooked until the edges are brown and caramelized, and then topped with bacon crumbles and cherry balsamic. Little of that fruit and twang came through, leaving these sprouts a bit dull ($10).

The Braised Pork Shank is far less demure and big enough for two to share. The shank bone juts out from the hunk of meat, enrobed in a mahogany mole sauce and generously garnished with pickled onions, cilantro and cotija cheese. A bundle of corn tortillas, wrapped in foil, and wedges of lime, are tucked onto the curved platter ($38).

Mole is a natural vehicle for showcasing chocolate, as well as the finesse of Peterson and her kitchen crew. Though chocolate provides a strong, warm undercurrent in the sauce, a blend of chipotle, morita, guajillo and pasilla peppers forms a rich, smoky, spicy backbone. A squeeze of lime lifts the sauce’s fruity notes. Fork-tender, juicy slow-roasted pork adds a bit of unctuousness to the plate. Add Tandy’s mole black beans ($9) as a side to double down on the mole. Is it a bit redundant? Sure. Did it stop us from greedily scooping those beans with all the other fixings into a pliant corn tortilla? Not at all.

When visiting a restaurant whose owner specializes in sweet indulgences, the question of dessert should be rhetorical. The Embers Chocolate Brownie, understandably, has been the restaurant’s most popular, our server shared. We follow the herd, soon greeted with a towering, craggy, pistachio-studded square at the center of a large matte black platter, topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. 

Tandy’s brownie isn’t a fudgy, death-by-chocolate kind of torte. Instead, it’s yet another reminder of chocolate’s versatility and complexity. The delicately crumbed dessert has citrusy, floral notes. The vanilla ice cream doesn’t serve as a relief from decadence; it brings out the lighter, brighter flavors in the brownie. This dessert playfully shines a new light on what a nostalgic treat can taste like, and we’re hooked.

For another layer of cacao, add a final sip with either the traditional Mayan Heat or creamy European Dark Drinking Chocolate. The Mayan-inspired version arrives in a small, handleless earthenware mug that we almost reflexively wrap our hands around to feel a tinge of heat. Each sip boasts a dash of chiles and warming spices. Made in the traditional method with hot water, this treat has the lighter body of a boldly brewed tea. It drinks less as a dessert and more like a calming nightcap.

Though this meal leaned into comfort, it just as easily could have delved into a splashier feast, with tinned fish or beef carpaccio to start, followed by an enticing trout amandine or New York steak. Or we could cozy up on one of those patio seats over a Mole Maria-fueled brunch and soak up some rays before the summer heat takes hold. Peterson set out to create a neighborhood spot where guests can settle in for any meal of the day. Around three months in, Tandy’s feels right at home.

Tandy’s

2320 E. Osborn Road