Adventures in salt and spice

NEW RESTAURANT

Life Is Beautiful Kitchen & Bar

99 Duxton Road

Tel: 9172 2740

Open for dinner only. Tues: 6pm to 12am. Wed-Sat: 6pm to 3am.

YOU know you're old when you step into a restaurant and expect to be - how shall we say - fed. As in, a place where you're greeted by a hostess who shows you to a nice table, with servers who know a little bit about their cuisine and a menu that offers a conventional range of starters, mains and more than one dessert.

Maybe they should put warning signs at new semi-eating places where drinking, music and hard partying hold sway over the food, like "If you don't know your way around a DJ console maybe this isn't your kind of place".

Not that signage is a priority for the owners of Life Is Beautiful - its corner spot in Duxton Road (just before you turn into Duxton Hill) is left deliberately nameless, to draw the curious into its gritty-chic space. Cement screed is the wall covering of choice; red lounge sofas (plus aforementioned DJ console), gleaming steel open kitchen, sturdy wooden tables and chairs complete the transformation of this former KTV lounge. By the way, tell us again why they're chasing KTV lounges out of Duxton and other conservation areas? Because people there drink hard, party ha…