Sara Crocker
Audio By Carbonatix
Tandy Peterson honed her cooking skills working under the acclaimed Valley chef Kevin Binkley, first at Cafe Bink and then at his fine dining restaurant Binkley’s. Now Peterson has opened her own all-day restaurant in Binkley’s former home.
Binkley’s namesake restaurant originally opened in Cave Creek in 2004, then took up residence in a bungalow on Osborn Road near 24th Street from 2016 until 2024. After Binkley’s closed in 2024, the space became home to The Larder & The Delta, a Southern-inspired fine dining restaurant run by acclaimed chef Stephen Jones. The tasting-menu restaurant closed in June after a 10-month run. When Peterson learned of the closure, she reached out to her former boss and mentor to inquire.
Binkley was intrigued by her interest, knowing her creativity, positivity and “workhorse” attitude firsthand. Peterson started working at Cafe Bink in 2010 while she was still in culinary school. She continued on at the restaurant and at Binkley’s, working every station of the restaurant run by the 11-time James Beard Award nominee.
“It was very technical,” Binkley says. “She was capable of doing everything there. There are very few people I can say who were capable of pulling that off.”
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She eventually became a roundsman for Binkley, a Jill-of-all-trades role that required the chef to fill any gaps or put out any fires at Binkley’s restaurants.
“She really excelled with us,” Binkley says. “She’s like family after that amount of time. We were thrilled with the idea of her kind of taking the torch.”
Courtesy of Tandy Peterson
Peterson moved to The Phoenician around 2017. When the luxe resort underwent a renovation, she staged at the Michelin-starred Spanish restaurant Asador Etxebarri, which is currently ranked No. 2 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. With that experience under her belt, Peterson revamped The Phoenician’s Italian restaurant Il Terrazzo into Mowry & Cotton, a seasonally driven all-day eatery that features wood-fired cooking.
The chef departed the resort in 2021 and launched Embers Chocolate, which offers single-origin chocolates and confections infused with rich flavors of whiskey, spices and pecans or strawberries and rose petals.
Originally, Peterson envisioned the Binkley’s building as a place for her growing chocolate business.
“I walked the space, and I haven’t been here in years, so I kind of fell in love with it again and realized the capability of the space was well beyond just scaling up chocolate,” Peterson says. “I thought I should just merge my two loves.”
Tandy’s, an all-day eatery and chocolaterie, opened on Dec. 5.
What’s on the menu at Tandy’s?
Peterson describes Tandy’s as a “neighborhood restaurant.” She worked to build a “very casual place with high-quality ingredients, you know, a place you can come hang out.”
Breakfast and lunch can be ordered at the counter. The breakfast menu includes an eclectic lineup of morning staples like shakshuka and breakfast burritos, plus croissants and pastries crafted by pastry chef Rebekah Swift.
These bites can be paired with classic coffee drinks and some unique twists with chocolate, like an espresso cocoa tonic or Mayan-inspired drinking chocolate. Peterson also blends cacao fruit into morning smoothies.
“It almost tastes like lychee,” the chef and chocolatier says. It’s a very, very bright fruit.”
Peterson draws from her culinary career for the lunch features, including a roast beef and Gruyère sandwich she served at Cafe Bink, as well as a play on a tuna melt made with rare, seared tuna and a pistachio-corn hummus on rye bread.
Peterson plans to add a happy hour and dinner service in the future. She is most excited for a happy hour that will offer more than deals on wine and charcuterie boards. She will use that time to feature the chocolate-making process through tours and tastings.
At other times of the day, diners can still catch a glimpse of the bean-to-bar process, as roasting, grinding and tempering can take several hours to even days. The program is helmed by Melissa Rusticus.
“You’ll be able to see chocolate grinding, you’ll be able to smell it,” Peterson says. “We’ll have our antique chocolate roaster, that’ll be on the back patio.”
While the lights come down and service ratchets up for dinner, the chef says evening meals will still be “very casual.”
The dinner menu will offer bistro-style dishes such as roasted chicken with panzanella salad, salmon and other “simple foods that I’ve taken inspiration from throughout my career,” Peterson says. Chocolate will be featured in a mole with pork shoulder, as well as in desserts, including a Japanese-inspired gateau and a cocoa nib crumble on crème brûlée.
To refresh the space for Tandy’s, Peterson added new artwork and a retail section with truffles and chocolate bars. She didn’t want to change much else in an effort to keep the homey feeling of the bungalow.
“I want people to slow down,” she says. “Everything about this space vibes with what I was feeling and wanted to see.”
She feels the vibes are also right for the neighborhood she’s joining. The chef describes midtown as the “next cutting edge” of Phoenix’s restaurant scene. Revered Thai eatery Glai Baan and the upstart tapas bar Mixela sit along the same block. An all-day spot is something the neighborhood is “starving for,” Binkley says.
“I think she’s hitting the nail on the head with something that the neighborhood needs,” Binkley says. “But also adding the chocolate component to it? That is awesome.”
Tandy’s
2320 E. Osborn Road
