RedFarm Restaurant By Chef Joe Ng - N.Y.C

RedFarm's facade practically flirts with you.

The well-lit front window glows with comely diners sitting at blond farmhouse tables. Like the rest of this new West Village restaurant from chef Joe Ng (Chinatown Brasserie) and restaurateur Ed Schoenfeld, RedFarm is easy on the eyes, but it's not full of itself.

A multilevel stand loaded with assorted starters ($19) is a good way to introduce your tongue to the kitchen's country-hopping ways. China is the anchor, but Japan, Korea and Thailand all elbow their way onto the table as well.

On our visit, one of the cantilevered bowls was filled with crispy beef that most other renditions of the dish only aspire to be. Flank steak that's been marinated with orange peel, vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, ginger and garlic takes a trip to the fryer three times. Wonderfully crusty and sticky, the pieces of meat break down in your mouth like bovine bacon.

Vegetable dumplings ($8) are dotted with corn kernels and filled with chopped jicama, carrots, bok choy, pea shoots and mushrooms. Shrimp dumplings ($12) with Pac-Man faces tip the scale toward adorable. Tubular Korean rice cakes, served with shrimp and Chinese sausage ($18), are a glutinous alternative to gnocchi.

Finally, a chocolate pudding ($7) rich with cocoa powder, butter and grated chocolate is a suitably incongruous way to end a meal here.

RedFarm, 529 Hudson St. (at Charles St.); 212-792-9700 or redfarmnyc.com