World favorites at Tandem.
The Tandem during a bustling lunch hour: Chatter bounces off the restaurant’s golden walls and century-old woodwork. Diners fill the table, and some of the seats at the bar, too. Plates heaped with food are ferried from kitchen to tables at a steady clip. And to think, this gem of a building sat unused for 12 years.
There must be hundreds of buildings like the former Wally Schmidt Tavern in Milwaukee — handsome buildings in need of some love. Juli Kaufmann of Fix Development and Jeremy Davis, an environmental specialist at nearby Walnut Way Conservation Corp., chose this one on W. Fond du Lac Ave. to restore.
It’s a beauty, from the intricately patterned hexagonal-tile floor to the metal scrollwork over an intimate booth at the back of the dining room. A wooden phone booth stands opposite, the HVAC system now tunneled through it.
Kaufmann and Davis revived the building, but chef Caitlin Cullen is giving it life, one fried chicken and healthful salad at a time.
Her menu pays homage to Southern favorites, and Cullen rounds it out with world flavors and vegetable-laden plates, including that grain salad ($9).
An enormous bowl holds chewy farro studded with curried sweet potatoes and carrots roasted with lemon; they’re mixed with kale and pine nuts, and a drizzle of yogurt and herbs settles over it. Plenty of flavor, plenty satisfying.
A salad at Sunday brunch, warm kale ($11) with roasted brussels sprouts, Parmesan and a poached egg, showed Cullen to be a master of dressings; the vinaigrette, infused with the flavor of bacon, was the model of balance. (The appetizer pickle plate, $7, shows the same mastery — not overly puckery, just the kind of gentle tang that gives other flavors equal time. The pickle plate when I had it held winter squash, cucumber, beet, onion and poblano pepper.)
That warm kale salad is one of the best brunch dishes in the city (with serious competition from the Tandem’s excellent wine-braised short rib hash with poached eggs, at $13, and cornmeal pancakes with house sausage, blueberry jam and maple syrup, $10).
The Tandem makes a killer burger, too, shaped by hand, thick and juicy, on a toasted bun. I had it at brunch, a half-pound patty topped with an egg, Swiss cheese and caramelized onions ($13), but it’s also served at dinner without the egg ($10) and at lunch, with a quarter-pound option ($5).
I’ve seen that burger turn heads when it’s carried through the dining room; the fried chicken carried on a metal tray has the same Pied-Piper kind of effect.
Fried chicken can be had solo (leg and thigh with sides, $13), but this is the time to enlist some chicken-loving friends for dinner and get the whole bird ($26). It’s a 10-piece feast (the breasts are halved to fry evenly).
The Tandem makes its birds two ways — spicy Memphis style, with a noticeable kick (but nothing too incendiary), and Georgia style (there’s a whisper of cayenne in there, too). Although an early rendition of Georgia style had a coating that would slip-slide away with a bite, both now have a crunch that holds.
Packed in a Tandem paper bag, the leftovers were still crisp the next day. Make a note for July — this is the sort of chicken that summer picnics are made of.
Dominican-style chicken, another whole bird ($26), is roasted with lime and black pepper, a style Cullen picked up when she lived in the Dominican Republic. Dark meat stayed moister than white, but it’s a tasty bird.
Chicken comes with three sides, chef’s choice — it might be the coleslaw, crisp, very lightly creamy and made bright with chopped cilantro, or the bitter greens (collards, lately), hitting a sweet spot of tangy and spicy. Or likely the ultracreamy mac and cheese, or maybe the fries, which are exactly what a fry should be: golden, crisp exterior hugging a fluffy interior.
If getting fried chicken isn’t in the cards, then start with something crisp. Corn flavor shines through in the hushpuppies ($6); okra ($6) and chicken livers ($8) are fried in cornmeal coating until supremely crunchy.
Cullen also makes chicken liver mousse ($8) with toast, pickled red onions and onion jam; the kitchen cuts up a lot of chickens, and the chef is loath to waste perfectly good livers. Another appetizer, burrata cheese ($10), is served with toast and changing accompaniments (pickled poblanos and jammy relish in early March, a good combination with that ultracreamy cheese).
The Tandem’s entrées range to about a half-dozen, including the burger and fried chicken (but not counting those mondo salads). There’s also a vegetarian burger ($9) — blissfully, not another black bean burger. This one is built on quinoa and chickpea, topped with a cheese of choice and pickled onions. (For another good vegetarian sandwich, check out the reuben made with beets at lunch, $8).
Other plates include flank steak with chimichurri and citrus rice ($16) and oxtail on the bone with Spanish-style red rice, fingerling potatoes and root vegetables ($15). Only the whole chicken, which can feed four, is more than $20.
The Tandem keeps its menu concise and lists daily specials on a chalkboard, like a Friday fish fry of top-quality walleye in beer batter ($16; lake perch is usually available at $14). Thursday is Detroit-style pizza; the rectangular, deep-dish pizza doesn’t hit a couple of key hallmarks — the crust’s typically buttery bottom, the frizzle of cheese along the edge where it hits the hot pan — but it’s still a good pizza at a bargain price ($10 to $12).
Desserts by sous chef Joe Sutter are only $6 and show more flair and flavor than a lot of pricier, phoned-in desserts elsewhere. Desserts change weekly, but if they’re available, consider the lemon, berry preserves and almond trifle or meringue topped with chocolate mousse and ice cream, lush with a dollop of whipped cream.
A vintage tandem bike presides over the bar, where guests dine or pause for a cocktail. The bar also serves a mix of craft and macro beers and modestly priced, smartly selected wines. (You’ll see the bicycle theme in a couple of other places — the light fixtures over tables at the windows, made to look like a cluster of bicycle wheels, and the trellises on the patio, assembled from bike wheels.)
Servers made us feel welcome, even when new ones were still learning the ropes — the foundation of good service. A couple of things that would help out guests: mentioning the prices of specials (or marking them on the board) and always offering to package leftovers.
It was news last year when Cullen, who previously worked at Bavette La Boucherie in the Third Ward, said she would open the Tandem in Lindsay Heights and hire staff from the neighborhood. It’s not as if Lindsay Heights didn’t have restaurants already, but the economically depressed neighborhood just 10 minutes from downtown has relatively few full-service restaurants, considering the number of residents and workers at nearby agencies and businesses.
Every neighborhood should have at least one restaurant like this, with talented, fromscratch cooking at moderate prices, served with heart, in a building that charms (again).