This brassy dumpling eatery combines culinary finesse with the verve of a New York deli
There’s a joyful silliness about dumpling joint Red Farm, newly transferred from New York to Covent Garden, that is so incongruent with the modern British restaurant scene that, to me, it felt instantly appealing. Into a landscape strewn with bitter fights about authenticity, Red Farm has flown its lurid Pac-Man dumplings. A Pac-Man made of tempura sweet potato, standing bolt upright and gob open, chases four multicoloured, plump, shrimp-stuffed dumpling ghosts across a white, oval plate. Go on, take a photo. Everyone else does.
Red Farm is not the elegant, solemnly genuflected A Wong in Victoria, which serves Chengdu street tofu, tea eggs and Yunnan province cheese. Nor is it Jen Cafe in Chinatown, which slings jiaozi to the purists in surroundings so humble that 20 minutes feels like a good long sit. No, Red Farm is a different dumpling entirely. This is Covent Garden, downwind of the jugglers and fire-breathers, and Red Farm, next door to New York compatriot Balthazar, is all decked out in red gingham, a blink-and-you’ve-spent-two-hundred-quid on-cheeseburger-stuffed-dim-sum restaurant where they play Jodeci, Bell Biv Devoe and various new jack swing. The walls are whitewashed, the chairs pine and the theme, if anything, Willy Wonka’s farmhouse. If any of this makes you balk, then probably don’t go. It’s not as if Red Farm doesn’t set its stall out as big, daft, delicious fun.
Grace Dent’s restaurant reviews appear in the award-winning food magazine Feast, along with recipes by Yotam Ottolenghi and more top cooks, with the Guardian every Saturday.
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