Red Farm Is Opening in Covent Garden

Ed Schoenfeld’s modern Chinese restaurant Red Farm appear to have finally secured a London site, eighteen months after Eater announced their intention to open their first location outside of New York City.

The ‘coming soon’ hoardings have gone up on a site next door to Covent Garden’s Balthazar, another NYC import, on Russell Street near the piazza. Red Farm London was registered at Companies house in April 2016. MCA reported in February that they are being backed by UAE-based hospitality company Gates Hospitality.

Red Farm first opened six years ago on Hudson Street in a former townhouse in the West Village, a collaboration between Chinese food expert and restaurateur Ed and ‘dim sum master’ Joe Ng, with a playful and inventive take on Chinese food, their self-styled “super-charged” dim sum creations including the much-talked about (and photographed) colourful ‘Pac-Man Shrimp Dumplings’ — each dumpling takes the form of a different coloured ‘ghost’.

Dumplings take centre stage on the menu at their Manhattan sites (a second site opened in 2013 on the Upper West Side): they include their pork and crab soup, steamed lobster, shrimp and snow pea leaf, and pan-fried lamb dumplings.

Other menu items include ‘lobster long life noodles’, ‘shrimp and scallop XO fried rice’, ‘sautéed black cod’ and ‘Katz’s pastrami egg roll’, the irreverent menu not being constrained by notions of strict ‘authenticity’.

The opening date is yet to be confirmed but Eater London understands that the demolition has just been completed and the opening is not imminent.

Check back for more details soon.

The site is at 9 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HZ.