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Stefan Richter, last season’s Top Chef runner up, held a couple of sneak preview open houses over the weekend to show off his new restaurant, the redesigned L.A. Farm — now dubbed Stefan’s at L.A. Farm (no relation to The Farm of Beverly Hills). The restaurant officially opens this Thursday, Aug. 6.

The space, which is housed in an office complex off an industrial stretch of Olympic Boulevard in Santa Monica, is sizable with a clean, classy look to it. I’m not familiar with the old L.A. Farm space — in fact, I never even knew it existed as it’s really easy to pass up on the street — so I can’t compare. But with a long bar, main dining room, outdoor patio area with fire pits and private dining room, there’s definitely a lot to work with.

The view from one end of the bar

Private dining room

Patio

View into the kitchen, right off the main entrance

But what you really want to hear about is the food, right? Well, I wish I could tell you about it in glorious detail, but I didn’t get enough to really form much of an opinion. And from the looks of other people’s tweets on the second night (I went on the first night, Friday), I wasn’t the only one.

So here’s what I can say about the food and drink. Drinks were easy to get, though I just had some champagne while my boyfriend, Rory, had PBR (in the bottle, no less). I saw a server carrying a tray of cocktails, but it soon disappeared, and I didn’t see any more after that so I’m not sure if Stefan had any signature cocktails at the event.

As for the food, it was a huge struggle to get much of anything. We (I was sitting with Elina Shatkin of the Los Angeles Times’ Daily Dish food blog, and Natalie Bovis-Nelsen of The Liquid Muse was also there) watched tray after tray come out and subsequently pass us by. We had to literally chase down some of the servers to get them to come over to us! What I did get to taste: a sardine on top of a cracker that looked like a SunChip but didn’t have as much flavor (eh); lobster bisque that tasted very gingery (good); a breaded and fried meatball (eh — why breaded? too much); and an incredibly greasy mini burger with smoked gouda and some kind of aoili (good but so greasy!). Elina got to taste a chocolate panna cotta, but I didn’t. Actually, she was the only one at our table who got it. Sigh. Here’s a look at the restaurant’s actual menu via Thrillist.

Sardine and cracker (sorry, blurry)

Lobster bisque

Mini burger

Chocolate panna cotta

I know this was more of an open house than a real tasting, but when you’re going to check out a restaurant, you expect to get a satisfying amount of food, and I was far from satisfied. I guess I’ll have to go back and have a proper meal to really judge.

Oh, and Stefan was there flitting around and looking happy, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to him, either.