There's a new ray of sunshine on Troy's Ferry Street, an unassuming block tethered to Fourth Street by a late-night eatery. At No. 95-97, the former home of a dimly lit pub, duets of lipstick-red bistro chairs now brighten the street. "Sunhee's Farm and Kitchen" splashes across storefront windows in gold script, and a local signmaker has cleverly played up the phonetically "sunny" name with a pop-art sunrise woodcut between the limbs of the existing L-shaped pub sign. In astonishment, I stood outside texting my guests. I was expecting something far less cute.

Others have written about owner Jinah Kim, a graduate of Shaker High and Boston College, whose recent work providing resettlement assistance to refugees has segued into a restaurant with a three-pronged plan to serve Korean food, employ new refugees and integrate produce from her family's Cambridge farm. It's an admirable plan, in keeping with the community of other bright young minds transforming Troy's historic neighborhoods. But few have written about her food.

I'd scanned the stripped-down, Americanized menu and online ordering, read the owner's social business model and formed an impression the social mission would be the leading force. Despite the family's Korean roots and fledgling farm, I intuited it was a long shot for really good cuisine.

Happily, I was wrong. Way wrong. Taste drives the simplified menu. Having seen Korean flavors — bone broths and sneaky pairings of gochujang and kimchee — creeping into dishes at downtown Troy neighbors the Shop and Peck's Arcade, Kim decided the area was ready for more. Her only direction to her mother, Chun Hee, and her mother's longtime friend, Sun Hwa, (their names form "Sun-hee"), who head the five- to seven-person immigrant kitchen team, was to cook as they always have for extended families in South Korea and for themselves at home.

The slim menu is intentional. Easily explainable, universally popular Korean dishes, stabled under familiar American headers, form a fast-casual, accessible menu. And accessibility is arguably Kim's second priority. Sunnyside eggs come from their chickens; tomatoes, peppers and other seasonal produce from their Garden of Eden farm. But they are not farm-to-table, not yet, and Kim emphasizes that grass-fed meats and all-organic produce would drive up prices, making meals unaffordable to those she wants to feed.

Anglicized sides, salads and stews are self-explanatory; starters only delve into Korean long enough to be recognizable as Asian pancakes, dumplings and noodles. Whether you know bibimbap from bulgogi or not, rice bowls have the familiarity of Buddha bowls — a current food trend and staple of vegan, gluten-free and health-minded eateries — built with colorful grains, veggies and protein. Sunhee's signature bibimbap ($10) starts with firm purple rice scented with nutty toasted-sesame oil, a bright base for the colorful palate of fiddleheads (dried and foraged), crisp carrots and bean sprouts topped with a fried egg ($1) and a thimble of the restaurant's darkly sweet gochujang, a fermented soy paste base house-finished with ginger, garlic and Japanese fermented apricot wine.

The simple interior culturally fuses the cream stucco-and-wood paneled walls of a Korean home with a contemporary rural American aesthetic — heavy wooden tables set with wild flowers and a counter constructed from weatherworn barn wood. The smiling staff inquires if you've been in before, explaining the fast-casual service while motioning to shelves stocked like a mini Korean market. Wall-mounted menu boards, more Etsy than Asian takeout, are only a starting point. Clipboards hold updated menus. In its first three months, there have been tests, revisions and cuts. Recently, a price increase means the lotus root side is out, soon to be replaced by slow-simmered burdock.

Service is straightforward: Order, pay and find a seat. Later you'll bus your tray and dishes into carefully labeled baskets for dishware, compostable waste and food slop to feed the chickens on the family farm. Food is delivered on metal trays, a modern touch, with eco-friendly paper napkins, metal chopsticks and slender metal cups for the complimentary lemon water. There's minimal waste — (even to-go containers are compostable — and the talking and smiling is unlike any fast food joint I've ever known.

Order broadly across the menu and you'll forget a spread of banchan isn't hitting the table. Ours was soon awash with white china bowls and little metal cups holding mild, freshly fermented Napa cabbage kimchee and sweet-soy dipping sauces accompanying the pan-fried meat dumplings ($5), one of a few things not homemade. We fanatically added more off-menu kimchee — the crisp, lighter daikon and softer, funkier cucumber made with farm-grown cukes.

Sticky, chewy, sweet-potato-starch japchae noodles ($8) wear bonnets of imported Korean shiitake and wood-ear mushrooms softened in light soy sauce. Slippery dumplings swim among slices of gummy rice cake dok and ribbons of egg and seaweed in the gorgeously light Korean New Year's Soup broth ($12). Twisted beef bulgogi ribbons — sweet and garlicky from a sweet-soy marinade — tumble among enoki mushrooms and green onions over purple rice. Our spongy seafood pancake ($8) piled with squid and grilled scallions, had been sliced into squares, and staff — noticing communal bowls and reaching chopsticks — brought plates to share.

Through the dividing archway, a sign on the pub side announces a coming beer, wine and dessert bar — think Korean kkwabaegi doughnuts and bungeoppang, those fish-shaped waffle pastries filled with red-bean paste. And I'm already a fan of Kim's homemade sweet rice cake ($2) in all its oddly pliable, sweet walnutty glory. Off to the side, a table of millenials behind laptops suggests Kim's goal to assist immigrants with college applications and community language classes may have already found space.

More Information Sunhee's Farm and Kitchen 95-97 Ferry St. Troy Phone: 272-3413 Web: www.sunhees.com Cuisine: Familiar Korean dishes that lend themselves to fast casual takeout preparation, including dumplings, noodles, bibimbap and bulgogi. Vegan and gluten-free options. Beer, wine and dessert bar coming soon. Ambiance: Welcoming eatery and marketplace that blends traditional Korean and rural farm elements in a fast casual takeout setting. Price: $ Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, closed Sunday. Credit cards: All major. Parking: Street. Handicapped accessible: Yes. Price ratings for inexpensive eateries based on average of entrée costs: $: $9.95 and less $$: $9.95-$15.95 $$$: $15.95 and higher The backstory of Sunhee's Farm will be featured in the Times Union's Food section on Thursday. Be sure to pick up a copy. See More Collapse

Nothing here is overly complicated: The food is good, faces friendly, ethics clear and goals big. I mean a Korean version of the Eataly NYC Marketplace big. Kim clearly has growth on her mind. Straddling cultures, this is quick Korean takeout in space so charming you'll want to eat on the Sunhee side of the street.

Lunch for a family of four — including three starters, two mains, three sides, one dessert — came to $79.12 including tax and an optional $10 cash tip. (As a casual-service restaurant, food is brought to tables, but diners bus trays and dishes, and tips are not required.)

Susie Davidson Powell is a freelance writer from East Greenbush. Follow her on Twitter, @SusieDP. To comment on this review, visit the Table Hopping blog, blog.timesunion.com/tablehopping.