Om Nomz Hero Note to Self: Cute looking food=tasty food. Same applies to animals.
The Dim Sum experience at Red Farm is a polar opposite than getting Dim Sum in Chinatown just 20 minutes away. Red Farm, opened by Ed Schoenfeld and Joe Ng (Chinatown Brasserie) is as stated on the website, “inspired Chinese cuisine with Greenmarket Sensibility”, translation: place for white people to eat dim sum without feeling intimidated and hold the MSG. Red Farm is quite small and is dominated with communal tables which I do not like but hey, it does capture the essence of eating in Chinatown and on the plus side, chances of you being setting next to a creepy old Chinese Grandma that stares at you throughout the meal is slim.
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| Pac Man Dumplings |
Dim Sum items dominate the meal with a good selection of appetizers, large plates and rice and noodle dishes. The brunch meal features some salad and sandwiches but I pretty much ignored. We started off with the Pac Man Shrimp Dumplings, or shrimp har gaw. It was a playfully cute looking dish, the dumplings were multicolored and had a tempura’d sweet potato that was looked like well, Pac Man. The dumpling skins are thicker, but the shrimp filling was great and if you are wondering, Pac Man tasted good too. It had actual whole pieces of shrimp, rather than a discernible meat paste. More after the Jump!
Next up was the Shrimp and Snow Pea Leaves dumplings which was my favorite. They were artfully wrapped and had black sesame eyes again, playing into making food looking cute card. It was jam packed with chopped snow pea leaves and somehow was still stay tender and not a pile of mush. We also ordered the crispy beef, which was another winner. The beef was indeed crispy and tossed in a sweet starchy sauce perfect to pick at the whole meal and still managed to have that crispy crunch even when it got cold. We also got an order of the pork and crab soup dumplings that were okay overall.
These dumplings were massive and did not really fit on the soup spoons, a ladle would be better. The skins of the dumplings were a bit too thin and the yellowish hue I am assuming the skin is similar to a wonton wrapper. There was a lot of soup, I will give them that but no matter how delicately you attempted to pick them up, they would stick to the parchment paper and rip the skin, causing leakage.
The broth I was able to get was full of flavor and meaty but would have been better if half of it did not spill into the bamboo basket. The filling was lacking, loosely packed and though I liked the addition of the dried shitake mushrooms, the crab flavor was non-existent. The filling may have been lacking in the soup dumpling but the Katz’s pastrami egg roll was full of tender pastrami. I guess a nod to the Lower East Side or the partnership of the two, whatever the reason; this was great with the extremely crisp shell and mustard side.
Lastly we got the Crabmeat long life noodles which were made with Yi-mein, one of my favorite Chinese noodles that yield a chewy and springy, “Q” texture. The noodles were saucy and topped with julienned snow peas giving it a nice textural crunch to it. Though one of the more expensive dishes on the menu, it is worth it.
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| Shrimp Snow Pea leaves dumping |
Next up was the Shrimp and Snow Pea Leaves dumplings which was my favorite. They were artfully wrapped and had black sesame eyes again, playing into making food looking cute card. It was jam packed with chopped snow pea leaves and somehow was still stay tender and not a pile of mush. We also ordered the crispy beef, which was another winner. The beef was indeed crispy and tossed in a sweet starchy sauce perfect to pick at the whole meal and still managed to have that crispy crunch even when it got cold. We also got an order of the pork and crab soup dumplings that were okay overall.
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| Crispy Beef |
These dumplings were massive and did not really fit on the soup spoons, a ladle would be better. The skins of the dumplings were a bit too thin and the yellowish hue I am assuming the skin is similar to a wonton wrapper. There was a lot of soup, I will give them that but no matter how delicately you attempted to pick them up, they would stick to the parchment paper and rip the skin, causing leakage.
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| Soup Dumplings |
The broth I was able to get was full of flavor and meaty but would have been better if half of it did not spill into the bamboo basket. The filling was lacking, loosely packed and though I liked the addition of the dried shitake mushrooms, the crab flavor was non-existent. The filling may have been lacking in the soup dumpling but the Katz’s pastrami egg roll was full of tender pastrami. I guess a nod to the Lower East Side or the partnership of the two, whatever the reason; this was great with the extremely crisp shell and mustard side.
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| Pastrami Egg Rolls |
Lastly we got the Crabmeat long life noodles which were made with Yi-mein, one of my favorite Chinese noodles that yield a chewy and springy, “Q” texture. The noodles were saucy and topped with julienned snow peas giving it a nice textural crunch to it. Though one of the more expensive dishes on the menu, it is worth it.
My stereotypical Asian instincts want to hate on Red Farm. 10 dollars for 4 soup dumplings? How much for their har gaw? They do not even give you tea! However the food at Red Farm is good and the quality of the food is of the highest quality. The food is cooked to order and as much as I enjoy the controlled chaos of a dim sum house, it is nice to have a relaxing Sunday meal being able to have a conversation and having Chinese moms attacking and reaching over you for food.
RedFarm
526 Hudson St.
New York, NY
http://redfarmnyc.com/
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| Long Life Noodles |
RedFarm
526 Hudson St.
New York, NY
http://redfarmnyc.com/
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