Ms Skinnyfat: Open Farm Community

The hippie food trend of the year (and probably next) revolves around seasonal and locally sourced food and Open Farm Community is serving up by far the most polished and marketable urban farming and restaurant concept at their sprawling 35,000 sqft hub at Dempsey. Chef Ryan Cliff brings to the table wholesome dishes, using as much produce as he can from the on site gardens and local farms.

My favorite dish at OFC is the Coal-baked omelette with smoked haddock, tarragon and grain mustard mornay. I was surprised at the portion given that the rest of the dishes were minute (relative to their price point). This makes for the best brunch dish and i would gladly polish off the creamy eggs with chunks of salty fish. Now where is my bread?

Sauteed local clams with pita and lemon meuniere sauce. Lovely briny morsels here but the portion was pathetic. A crunchy bread would work better than the pita, which turned kinda tough after being in the open for a bit.

Local pumpkin with Minden Road pesto and pita bread. Well i love pumpkin but this is something anyone can do at home. For the price, i can easily buy a few pumpkins, instead of having just one sad sad slice. So nope, do not order this. And i don't see how the pita even goes with the dish. In fact, it contributed to the overall dryness of this dish.

If you would like a vegetable dish, then go with the Baby eggplant with spicy togarashi, quinoa, curry oil and sourdough. At least it's more well thought out in terms of flavors and textures. I would say this has quite a Mediterranean-Asian flavor.

For something more substantial, go for their handmade pastas which come in varieties other than the regular spaghetti and linguine. A hit for us was the Mud Crab Spaghettoni with Thai curry sauce, crunchy yellow squash, coconut, crispy shallot thai basil. Those delicious sweet chunks of crab!! Plus the chewy udon like spaghettoni with the mild creamy coconut curry. Can't get enough of this!

The Strozzapreti with 48 hour Barolo braised oxtail, parmesan wafers and wild thyme was also favored by some of my dining companions. The meat was a little too salty for me and it still had a gamey flavor. The texture was great though.

A pretty and comforting dish was the Smoked duck cappelletti with baby spinach, dark brown chicken and thyme tea. I would finish the broth but i could not get past the thick pasta shells. Some tweaking needs to be done as the pasta stole the flavor from the meat.

The Roasted baby chicken, braised leeks with hazelnut butter and wild watercress salad surprised me with the tender and juicy flesh despite its dryish appearance. It's nothing very spectacular though.

The 250g Charred Wagyu Burger with garlic fries and mayo was MEH. It was bland and blah and absolutely not worth the price tag or calories. A stronger tomato relish with pickles, cheese that melts better, and generally just a tad more seasoning (like pepper and salt).