Allie’s Adventures in Eating: RedFarm

One of the most fun aspects of being a food writer is researching the next restaurant to review. We strike a balance between wanting to enjoy a meal for ourselves versus our desire to provide our readers with an enjoyable experience. With a restaurant tagline like ‘Innovative, Inspired Chinese Cuisine with Greenmarket Sensibility,’ my gut instinct told me that Red Farm would rate a home run in both areas.

Red Farm

Knowing how quickly Joe Ng’s culinary venture had grown in popularity, Chris and I hosted date night in the city on a Monday night–hoping the wait for a table wouldn’t be too extreme. Arriving at 7:00 PM, we were told we may wait up to two hours, but they’d text us when a table opened up. Thankfully, we received a text within an hour. We were seated at a large communal table, which lent to entertaining discussion about food with our neighbors.

Red Farm Menu

It was incredibly hard to decide what we would order from this creative menu. Everything looked so good! Soup dumplings were a given for us, but there were so many other enticing dishes to choose from.

Red Farm Pork and Crab Soup Dumplings

Red Farm Black Truffle and Chicken Soup Dumplings

  1. Pork and Crab Soup Dumplings
  2. Black Truffle Chicken Soup Dumplings

If you’ve never eaten a soup dumpling, you are truly missing out. You can’t order these via takeout, as the delightful pouches contain steaming broth which must be poked out into a soup spoon–promptly upon arrival to the table. In true Chris and Allie fashion, we disagreed on which of these were better. He loved the pork and crab, whereas I preferred the black truffle chicken, but each had layers of flavors pleasing to the palate.

Red Farm Kowloon Filet Mignon Tarts

Red Farm Katz's Pastrami Egg Roll

Red Farm Pac Man Shrimp Rolls

  1. Kowloon Filet Mignon Tarts
  2. Katz’s Pastrami Egg Rolls
  3. Pac Man Shrimp Rolls

The filet mignon tarts were an unexpected dark horse. There were layers of pastry, corn, filet and what we believe were fried onions. They melted in our mouths like “beef butter,” as Chris put it, but the texture was both smooth and crunchy. The Katz’s pastrami egg rolls were fantastic as well–it was like eating a reuben sandwich in a light, but crispy egg roll skin. Accompanying the rolls was a mustard which offered a creamy, but spicy punch.

Proving why this eatery is inventive, the Pac Man shrimp rolls provided a humorous visual. A fried sweet potato cake over guacamole is chasing four “surprised” shrimp rolls, but the surprise is that each roll contains a different ingredient mixed in with the shrimp. Naturally, we wanted to play video games after eating this Dim Sum delight.

Red Farm Crisp Skin Chicken

Red Farm Dungeness Crabmeat & Rock Crab Long Life Noodles

  1. Crisp Skin Chicken with Garlic Sauce
  2. Dungeness Crabmeat and Rock Crab Long Life Noodles

Each of these mains was great. Surprisingly enough, we agreed on which was better–the chicken. While the crab noodles were cool because they included fried crab claws, we really couldn’t taste much crab in the actual noodles themselves. On the other hand, the chicken skin lived up to its crispy name. The poultry was succulent, and we adored the sauces, which we believe were peanut and spicy bitter melon. Once again, we would have been perfectly content with starters, had we not been dying to try some entrees as well.

As you can see, we were huge fans of Red Farm. The meal was fantastic and we truly embraced the communal dining experience. I recommend this restaurant to anyone looking for a different approach to Chinese food, but you should get there quickly before it is truly impossible to get a seat.

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