For those that know me, I generally am against "new age" Chinese places that aren't run by Asians and that aren't located in the dingy dirty belly of Chinatown or Flushing. RedFarm is the complete opposite of how I like my Chinese restaurants: located in the trendy part of the West Village, clean, and with hardly an Asian waitstaff in sight. Plus I also can't stand to pay a lot of money for good Asian food. So you'd think this would not be a place I would enjoy. But I have to say I really really loved my meal. If I was still giving 1/4 forks, this place would be a solid 4.25 Forks but I'm willing to round up to 4.5 Forks this time.
The menu is heavy on the dim sum/small plates and has just a handful of large dishes. Nancy and I split the shrimp and snow pea leaf dumplings ($10), the okra and eggplant curry ($17) and the wide noodles with shredded roast duck ($16). Price-wise I was appalled but after trying the food, it made me think that I generally pay this much at other more bland restaurants so I was willing to not over think about what I was paying. The dumplings came out perfectly steamed in a cute square bamboo container. I've had tons and tons of dim sum before in my life and while this was x3 what I would normally pay, you could taste the extreme freshness of these dumplings. They were steaming hot but you could literally taste that they just wrapped and steamed them right before serving them. They were amazing. The curry and rice noodles came out at the same time and the serving sizes were huge. Definitely more than enough for 2 people, I might even say it was enough for 3 people. The noodles were wide rice noodles but cooked with just the right flavor and not oily at all (these type of noodles tend to be very greasy in many Chinese places) and the roast duck was incredibly tender and indeed shredded into the right size. I couldn't stop eating it. Of the dishes, the curry was the more disappointing dish, but still good. I just think it's hard to eat curry on a plate with chopsticks. But the eggplant and okra were tender but not mushy (which can be easily done with both veggies) and the curry had a definite kick to it but not too spicy. For those of you who are into curry, it was close to a yellow curry not a red or green one. We ordered 1 small rice bowl which was pretty small and made it hard to sop up all the curry in the bowl.
All in all, I though the food was really spot on. My one complaint is that the communal seating makes it a bit difficult to maneuver around your seating area and it's almost impossible to hear your table mate. I was literally screaming at Nancy by the end of dinner. RedFarm made me a believer that despite having pre-disposed notions about what you don't like about a restaurant, sometimes it can really surprise you. Total bill: ~$35/pp.
Photo Credit: Yelp
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