Dim Sum is extremely popular where I live in Thailand because of the Chinese heritage of many of the Thai people there. This is normally a morning experience and it costs next to nothing. I mean seriously; if you can spend more than $10 at a dim sum place in Thailand you are either being ripped off or you are somewhere super-fancy. So when I looked at the menu at Red Farm on the upper west side of Manhattan, I was really expecting magic.
Don't get me wrong, it was good but "several hundred dollars" good (between 5 of us) well..... it wasn't that good. I also understand that this restaurant can charge that much because of their fame. It was Friday night in New York afterall so of course they were really busy.
intentionally blurry photo, to protect the innocent
We ordered a bunch of stuff but the main attraction (as is indicated by their menu) is the "Pac Man" dumplings, which are cute and of course they taste fantastic. The presentation is most of the fun to be honest.
They do resemble the ghosts from Pac Man because of the eyes. They were loaded with flavor but I have to say this and yes, I am being critical because I come from the part of the world where these things are just as good and cost 1/20th as much.
Of course if I owned Red Farm and I had a 1 hour waiting list every night (they do not accept reservations) I would be charging at least as much as they charge here. I would likely toy with the idea of charging more. After all, it is all a game of supply and demand.
The highlight of the evening for me was the crispy duck and crab dumplings that came with a mildly spicy sauce to dip them in.
Despite the fact that we were all sharing, I ended up eating 3 of these because i think I was alone in my opinion of this being the best part of our meal.
If you know anything about Manhattan you probably know that the upper west side is an extremely "hoity-toity fancy-pants" part of the city so it should surprise no one that it was expensive. For me, while this place is good, it is entirely too expensive and even if you want to splurge on "the best" of something in the city I would say to give this place a miss. I honestly believe that a big part of their fame is because the patrons have likely never had this food at the source, in Asia.
If they did, I have a hard time believing that anyone, even people with a load of money, would ever spend this much money on an extremely common Asian food.
There is no chance I would eat here again because I am a very "price vs quality" type person and in my mind this place was not at all worth what they charge.