LA Times Critic Finds Convoluted Cooking at OC Hit Restaurant Farmhouse - Eater LA
"Co-critic Patricia Escárcega found a lot to dislike at the spendy Farmhouse at Roger’s Gardens in Corona Del Mar, the tony coastal neighborhood along the Newport Beach coast. The restaurant offers loads of al fresco seating and is situated inside a “seven-acre luxury nursery,” but even the closeness to nature can’t help to elevate chef Rich Mead’s takes on “field-to-fork” cooking. Escárcega can’t get past a “convoluted” bowl of rye berries with Chinese sausage, shrimp, kimchi, and caramelized onions, noting unhappily that it has been “crowned with a rubbery fried egg,” and that it all just “quickly slips into a brown, salty torpor.” Another signature vegetable bowl doesn’t fare much better: “The bowl — a dense, sluggish welter of fibrous things — is a slog.” Other dishes like a pork tenderloin come off as “unappealingly tangy” thanks to a port-dried cherry sauce, and the Icelandic cod is “conspicuously underseasoned.” In all, there’s not much to recommend beyond the helpful service and gorgeous setting." - Farley Elliott
