David K.
Yelp
Tandem's claim to fame is its ragu, a thick stew made with chunks of meat in a tomato-based sauce. It comes served in a variety of ways, but my pick was the fresh potato gnocchi with ragu and smoked provola cheese. The dominant flavor of this dish came from the super salty ragu, which was lightly sweetened by the tomato sauce and had a smokiness from the provola cheese, but overall, the flavors just weren't quite balanced. One of my favorite parts about eating Italian pasta dishes is wiping up the last of the sauce with a piece of bread (scarpetta), but in this case, the bread that came with the cover charge had a crust that was as hard as a rock, which even the tomato sauce couldn't break through.
While the ragu was a bit of a disappointment, I also tried a secondi dish, the meatballs in a Neapolitan Genovese sauce, made of slow-cooked, caramelized onions with white wine. Without the tomatoes, this sauce was much more balanced in flavor, and was a nice complement to the soft, juicy, meaty meatballs. And finally, we ordered a side of the Friarielli (local greens) that were cooked down and had a bitter flavor, which made for a nice complement to the other heartier dishes.