RedFarm — Restaurant in New York

I went there for my Chinese New Year's Eve dinner and got an assortment of food. I had no wait for a party of two at 7:30pm Wednesday. We were seated in a booth but the space seemed a bit tight with the table next to us only 6 inches away. I couldn't even put on my coat by our table and going to the bathroom, I had to squeeze through our tables fearing I would knock over something.

I started with a Tea & Sour cocktail that was well made and tasty. They also have a good selection of craft beers on draft, bottles, wine, and sangria.

We ordered 4 Dim Sum dishes and the Nueske's Bacon & Egg Fried Rice. They were brought out one at a time. The service was quick and nice. They regularly refill our water but it was confusing who our server was. However, you can get get the attention of anyone and they can help.

We started with the Pac Man Shrimp Dumplings. It consists of 4 "Ghosts" har-gow dumplings with a hint of lobster in the first (Red-Blinky), mushrooms in the second (Yellow-Clyde), crab in the third (Blue-Inky), and bamboo shoots in the fourth (Pink-Pinky). It came with a lightly battered fried sweet potato Pac Man disc seated on guacamole. While adorable and cutest presentation, it is something you get once. It was pretty boring and my least favorite dish. None of the specialty "flavors" came through and all four taste the same.

The Lamb Dumpling Shooters with Miso Soup chasers were delicious. Lots of lamb flavors in the dumpling. The dumpling skin was nice, thin, and pan seared nicely. The miso soup was full of seaweed and soft tofu and had a rich miso flavor. It was a good complement to the dumplings.

The Crispy Duck & Crab Dumplings are a winner; both super cutesy with the crab claw stuffed with duck and marinated veggies lightly coated in a crispy fried shell with braised curry mixed vegetables in the middle. The curry vegetables contained okra, eggplant, and Chinese broccoli and had quite a spicy kick to it. Very nicely composed and still had adorable eyes on the dumplings!

The Pork & Crab Soup Dumplings came out in individual steamers with some ginger soy vinegar. The server will explain how to eat it without loosing too much of the soup when they bring it out. Most of the places that offer pork and crab soup dumplings will use some of the crab roe to heighten the flavor. This one didn't so it kind of fell flat. The soup to meat filling ratio wasn't quite there either (not enough soup) and wasn't brought out hot enough. The dumplings were also kind of too big for this type. Tasted fine and nice presentation but would not get again.

The Nueske's Bacon & Egg Fried Rice was done very well. There were so many ingredients in the fried rice. The bacon was nicely crispy with a good chew to it. The chopped up onions and snow peas were nicely wok-charred, crispy, and plentiful. Very good overall.

Fun place to go with a good selection of bites. Would love to come back and try other dishes. This is definitely a place to share everything and taste...

UPDATE, 2nd VISIT, IN 2022: The food at Red Farm is so fresh tasting. The server was very pleasant. We hope to go more frequently, but the prices are a tad dear, so the value for money means I can't quite give 5 stars. It's a 4.5-star restaurant overall.

We had the Crab, Truffle and Corn Chowder, which I highly recommend. It was amazing. It is a smooth style of chowder, which I vastly prefer over the style of chowders that have large chucks of potato in them.

That was followed by the Happy Buddha Delight and a crispy-skin smoked chicken dish with the merest touch of spiciness from (lightly sautéed?) jalapenos and, I think, chopped scallions. I recommend both. The chicken dish is sufficiently mild for those who do not like spiciness, such as my dining companion who thought it was excellent; they simply made sure to not eat one of the jalapeno slices. The server beforehand said the dish was mild and my companion and I both agree that the server's description is accurate. More importantly, the chicken was decidedly moist and tender!

The bite-size ice cream sandwiches for dessert were pistachio, chocolate, coconut, and strawberry, and occasioned the meal's only snag, which was minor. The dessert was described to us incorrectly by another staff member before we ordered it as including caramel, not coconut, as one of the flavors. I rather strongly dislike coconut, so my dining companion enjoined that whole sandwich, which by tanning-lotion-like smell alone--not to mention color--was instantly discernable as most definitely not caramel. But my companion, a coconut fan, thought it was excellent. I most enjoyed the strawberry one. These are not sandwiches except in structure... :) They are four sandwich bites. It would be better to call them, perhaps, Ice Cream Finger Sandwiches, to evoke that they're rather dainty. They are quite small, yet can still be shared by two diners--each one getting a small bite. All of the dishes were easily shared.

A PRIOR, 2021, VISIT: Prices are steep but the quality of the food arguably justifies it. The spicy tequila cocktail was amazing. The happy Buddha dish was good but the Singapore noodles dish was even better. We ate outside and thought the table was great--good people watching....

I started doing delivery when the pandemic started about a whole year from now, I have never experienced a bad encounter at any restaurant. But today when I went to pick up a DoorDash delivery order from the restaurant Redfarm at Broadway, the employee said it will be 10 minutes wait for the food, I replied with “ in the app is says status of the food is ready for pick up. The employees said “just give us 10 minutes and the food will be ready”, I responded back saying “ok I’ll be here waiting for the food”. About 15 minutes has passed and I still haven’t got the food, so I went up to the employee, and asked is the food ready? The employee replied with “ NOOO it’s not, can you just wait another 10 minutes”? I said okey fine just please have the food ready by then. Another 15 minutes has passed and I still haven’t gotten the food, I was so frustrated and got really heated because they had me standing there for 30 minutes and still haven’t gotten the food ready. I went up to the employee I asked where is my food? I been waiting here for 30 minutes and why did you guys made the status of the food ready for pick up when the food isn’t ready. Because of you guys trying to keep your rating good, us delivery drivers get bad customer rating for food being delivered late and our rating drops very low, which can cost us our account being deactivated. The employee said “i don’t care, if you want the food you have to wait more and if you keep bothering me I’ll cancel the the order”. I told the employee if the food was going to be this late you should’ve told me when I came in instead of saying give me 10 minutes like 3 times, and you’re behaving very disrespectful, to me and what you’re doing isn’t fair to us delivery drivers. I left the store empty-handed and now I’m taking my time to write this complaint. This needs to be fixed, restaurant employees should treat delivery drivers with respect as they treat the customer they have in dining. PLEASE FIX THIS, IF THIS CONTINUES DELIVERY DRIVERS WILL...