Red Farm

Last weekend, Kristen, Christine and I met up at RedFarm for lunch and to catch up since we haven’t seen each other in such a long time. We initially tried going upstairs but they were remodeling the upstairs portion of the restaurant, so we went downstairs instead. The hostess said there was either three seats at the communal table or we could sit at the bar and sit next to one another – we decided to sit at the communal table, but when she showed us the seats, two were next to each other and the third was at the other end of the table – that person would’ve been stuck by themselves! Luckily, the bar had a corner free so we sat over there instead.

The waiter said they didn’t have any hot water (so no hot tea was available), but they did have a lot of drinks, which was something he reminded us multiple times! The waiter eventually got the point that we weren’t interested in drinks in the middle of the day so he explained the menu to us and recommended some dishes.

We started with the Katz’s egg roll:

The skin of the egg roll is thick and very crispy and the pastrami that’s stuffed inside is pretty much perfect. We all liked this dish dipped with the mustard on the side.

Next, the pork and crab soup dumplings:

You had to eat these with a spoon (as you do with all soup dumplings) but it was all soup inside, there wasn’t any chunk of meat inside. Also, the price difference between the west village’s RedFarm and Chinatown’s Joe Shanghai is kind of ridiculous; 4 soup dumplings at RedFarm = $14, 8 soup dumplings at Joe Shanghai = $6. I thought the soup dumplings were okay, but definitely not worth ordering again.

We also ordered the shrimp and pea shoots dumplings:

These were very fresh and had large chunks of shrimp inside – definitely worth ordering.

The pork buns:

They steam the pork buns and then fry one side of them, then top it with a semi-sweet sauce. I thought there wasn’t enough flavor in the pork buns but I did like the texture of the fried part of the bun.

Finally, we shared the cauliflower and brussel sprouts with black garlic sauce:

This was very good – well cooked cauliflower and brussel sprouts with lots of garlic sauce.

We all enjoyed brunch/dim sum and thought everything was okay – I had a great time catching up with Christine and Kristen (so much to catch up on!) and I definitely want to return when they finish remodeling the upstairs (and when they have hot water again!)