One of New York City's best dim sum chefs opening Red Farm in downtown Austin in November

Matthew Odam, Austin American-Statesman
·4 min read
Executive chef Joe Ng is famous for his dumplings, of which he has made more than 1,000 varieties.
Executive chef Joe Ng is famous for his dumplings, of which he has made more than 1,000 varieties.

If you spent much time exploring the Chinese restaurant scene of New York City over the last dozen years, you likely came across the bespectacled visage of the late Ed Schoenfeld and the whimsical dim sum creations of chef Joe Ng.

The two men, along with the father-and-son team of Jeffrey and Zach Chodorow, opened Red Farm in NYC’s West Village in 2011 and later opened a location uptown. Schoenfeld’s singular brand of hospitality, informed by almost 50 years of working in NYC’s Chinese restaurants, and Hong Kong native Ng’s dishes like Peking duck, dumplings designed like Pac-Man characters and creative riffs such as an egg roll filled with pastrami from Katz’s Delicatessen made Red Farm one of the most popular and critically praised Chinese food restaurants in a town full of them.

Now, original partners Zach Chodorow and chef Ng, have partnered with Austin restaurateur Jesse Herman (co-founder of La Condesa, Sway and Otoko) to bring their unique brand of hospitality and cuisine to Austin. Red Farm will open for nightly dinner on Nov. 8 at 201 W. Third St., in the large corner space previously inhabited by Cantina Laredo. Lunch and weekend dim sum service are expected to be added in the future. Reservations can be made at redfarmatx.com.

Red Farm, which opened its first restaurant in New York City in 2011, serves a roster of dim sum and dishes like spicy crispy beef.
Red Farm, which opened its first restaurant in New York City in 2011, serves a roster of dim sum and dishes like spicy crispy beef.

Herman, who moved to Austin in 2008 from New York City to open modern Mexican restaurant La Condesa, was visiting NYC often for business over a period of years, and on each trip he would almost exclusively eat the Italian and Chinese cuisine he missed from his time living in the city.

A chef friend turned him onto Red Farm, where he and his friends were almost instantly taken with the late Schoenfeld, whose warmth and exuberance, combined with his knowledge of everything from Chinese cuisine to the music industry, made him an almost cinematic type character.

Schoenfeld for several years casually mentioned to Herman the possibility of opening a Red Farm in Austin, and when Zach Chodorow, visited the city and saw the space that Herman had flagged as a possibility, was instantly sold. The partners have been working on bringing the restaurant, which will employ a handful of employees from the New York locations, to Austin since 2018.

White painted brick, plants and warm wood tones make Red Farm look more like a modernist farm-to-table restaurant than a stereotypical Chinese restaurant.
White painted brick, plants and warm wood tones make Red Farm look more like a modernist farm-to-table restaurant than a stereotypical Chinese restaurant.

Chodorow, whose family company China Grill Management has operated restaurants everywhere from Los Angeles to London, says he’d been approached by investment groups and wealthy food lovers with no restaurant experience over the years about trying to replicate Red Farm’s success outside of NYC. But no potential deal grabbed his interest until talking to Herman about Austin, which Chodorow said just felt right.

Herman, who worked as a partner at New Waterloo for several years before leaving to work as an independent operator, worked in NYC for a decade before his 15 years in Austin, which he says have helped him refine his understanding on what works well in town and what the city is missing.

“In the last 15 years or so, we’ve had an explosion of restaurants here, not necessarily an explosion of cuisines,” Herman told the American-Statesman earlier this year. “There’s a lot of underserved cuisines, or you might not have a spectrum of experiences across that cuisine, from strip mall to high-end places. Just having had the food and experience, to me it translated pretty easily to what we would like here.”

Executive chef Joe Ng moved from Hong Kong to New York City as a teenager and his wide variety of dim sum dishes have made Red Farm a hit in two locations in the city.
Executive chef Joe Ng moved from Hong Kong to New York City as a teenager and his wide variety of dim sum dishes have made Red Farm a hit in two locations in the city.

Publications in New York have called out Ng’s dim sum as some of the best in the city, and Chodorow said state-run television in China once declared Ng’s Peking duck as the best outside of the country.

“He’s one of the more unique chefs out there,” Chodorow said of Ng. “I’ve never had Chinese food from anybody quite like him.”

Whether he is adding Katz’s pastrami to an egg roll, or finding inventive ways to reimagine a steak dish, like marinating it with papaya and glazing it with soy and sesame, Chodorow says Ng is able to create food that has appeal to people from Hong Kong and mainland China but is also familiar to Americans.

“I don’t actually know how to describe it. It’s just really good,” Chodorow said.

“You know it when you experience it,” Herman added. “It sort of becomes obvious how unique but familiar it is.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: NYC's Red Farm chefs open dim sum restaurant in Austin this November