Tandem chefs Alex Tan and Mikee Lopez might change the way you think about cerebral yet emotional menus

Playing on the strengths of their tandem, chefs Alex Tan and Mikee Lopez gear up for their latest menu offering at their restaurant aptly named Tandem.

“Even before meeting each other, it was always our dream to start our own restaurant,” says Lopez. “We both shared the vision of what we wanted a restaurant to be like, how we wanted to treat people, what kind of food we wanted to push out. So when those visions aligned, it made sense to start this project together.”

The couple spent the whole of the pandemic in a condo unit and even started an online pasta business. That time has allowed them to grow and realize their dream of putting up their own restaurant together.

“We anchor our menus on our themes because it allows us to tell stories using food as our medium without limiting ourselves to one particular cuisine,” explains Alex Tan.

“That was a good testing period. It helped us understand that we can actually work together. The things we learned during the pandemic about how to cooperate with each other are still very much applicable in a business scenario,” Tan chimes in.

Located in Legazpi Village in Makati, the restaurant serves eclectic dishes that surround a certain theme instead of a specific cuisine. Opening a thematic restaurant allows Tan and Lopez to express themselves beyond the plate.

“We anchor our menus on our themes because it allows us to tell stories using food as our medium without limiting ourselves to one particular cuisine,” explains Tan.

He recognizes it’s a risky move as cuisine is usually a deciding factor of where to eat. But so far, it’s a move that has paid dividends for the experienced chefs. Tan has worked at renowned restaurants in New York like Café Boulud and The NoMad and even staged at L’Effervescence in Tokyo while Lopez was Josh Boutwood’s former sous chef at Helm and The Test Kitchen. Their collective expertise spans several types of cuisines and styles and eventually dictated what type of food they wanted to serve at Tandem and how they wanted to serve it.

“I don’t know if it’s misplaced confidence or whatever, but I think with the avenue of a tasting course, we get to be a little bit more creative. I feel like because of the training we both received, we feel like we could showcase what we could offer and put that more in the forefront versus an upscale casual setup,” Tan elaborates.

Tan and Lopez agreed even during lockdowns that they wanted to have thematic menus for their restaurant. For instance, the very first menu at Tandem was all about the “top crops of the Philippines” which was based on a report by the Philippine Statistics Authority. The menu incorporated the top 10 crops on the list such as tomatoes and onions and created dishes around them.

“So the theme comes first. Then we start thinking about how to break that down into courses that make sense. Then we break those courses down and think about the food and the flavors that might apply and how they relate to the theme,” Alex Tan explains.

“So the theme comes first. Then we start thinking about how to break that down into courses that make sense,” Tan explains. “Then we break those courses down and think about the food and the flavors that might apply and how they relate to the theme. Of course in such a way that it’s not forced or gimmicky. Still whimsical but at the end of the day we’re a restaurant. We don’t want to serve just stories. We want to actually serve you food that tastes good that makes sense.”

The menu they just wrapped up was called Emotions (which coincided with the opening of “Inside Out 2”) where they developed dishes around emotions as well as personal experiences to those emotions. “So one of the dishes from the Emotions menu that is turning out to be a crowd favorite is ‘Fear,’ which is a pasta dish. It’s a squid ink garganelli with some anchovy butter, mussels, demi-sec (semi-dried) tomatoes and it’s covered by a black olive lavash (flatbread). So you don’t really know what is going on,” Lopez describes.

The plate this dish comes in is also black and plays with one’s fear of darkness and the unknown. The black lavash conceals the other ingredients completely and everything is a surprise until you push it aside or crack it. The course is also referencing two fears of the chef owners: the fear of the dark (hence the use of black ingredients) and the fear of the ocean (the witty use of seafood).

As Tandem wants people to focus on the food and actually satisfy their hunger, the restaurant is also passionate about and mindful of reducing waste. Being a thematic restaurant actually helps in that aspect.

“Is it sustainable to import everything from all over the world? It’s not. Again, one of the advantages we have here is that because we’re not cuisine-forward, we don’t have the need to chase authenticity of a single cuisine. We can just be authentic to ourselves,” says Tan.

Tandem’s latest menu is out now and this time it revolves around music. “We believe music to be such an important aspect of our humanity. There are so many facets of music that we can talk about—music as language, history, as an art. The one we found to have most parallels with food is music as a form of expression,” Tan continues. “Which is exactly what we do here in Tandem—using food as our medium for expressing our stories, hoping to make connections with our guests.”