I can’t remember the last time I was served crispy beef by someone with a tattoo,” whispered Mrs. Platt as we wedged ourselves into one of the long communal tables at the boisterous newfangled Chinese restaurant RedFarm, which opened a couple of months ago on Hudson Street in the West Village. The brightly lit little townhouse space is built with wooden rafters and banquettes, and decorated here and there with familiar casual barnyard touches like wooden packing crates, dangling candles, and the kinds of flowerpots you see hanging in the courtyard homes of old Chinese houses. There were plenty of tattooed diners, too, sitting at the long tables, which were set with mismatched chairs as in a country kitchen. They sipped fashionable, non-Chinese cocktails like the RedFarm Manhattan, and picked at thick, American-style egg rolls stuffed with Katz’s pastrami, and dishes with antic names like Shu Mai Shooters.
RedFarm is bankrolled by that ubiquitous restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow (China Grill, Asia de Cuba), but the concept belongs to the great czar of New York’s increasingly moribund Chinese-food scene, Ed Schoenfeld. Schoenfeld has had a hand in numerous Chinese dining trends over the decades (the seventies establishment he managed, Uncle Tai’s Hunan Yuan, launched the General Tso’s chicken craze on an unsuspecting city), and he’s been involved with many high-profile Chinese restaurants, including Shun Lee Palace and Chinatown Brasserie. As the catchy name indicates, RedFarm is an attempt to update the ancient, tired formulas and market them to the new, more casual generation of big-city diners. This means, among other things, that there are no reservations at this “farm style” Chinese restaurant, and that the bistro-style one-page menu is imbued with what the proprietors eagerly describe as a “Greenmarket style” sensibility.
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