Life Is Beautiful to include pop-up cooking demonstrations

Three pop-up cooking demonstrations and two mixology segments each day will be among the highlights of the culinary portion of the Life Is Beautiful Festival Sept. 25-27 in downtown Las Vegas. And this year's installment of the festival, now in its third year, will have a decidedly local flavor.

"The first year we really worked hard on bringing in chefs from all across the country, but we've had to become a little tighter with it," local chef Kim Canteenwalla, one of the festival organizers, said in an interview last week. "The cool thing about Life is Beautiful is that I know most every chef or restaurant. I think we're going to have a great lineup of chefs, restaurants, mixologists and entertainment. It's a win-win."

"It's very important for us to continue to incorporate the local Las Vegas restaurant scene and food culture into the festival," managing director Eva Cohen said in a press release. "We're excited to bring the culinary experience closer to the fans this year by providing them with front-row access to the pop-up demonstrations."

Those demonstrations will be performed by Canteenwalla and his wife, restaurant developer Elizabeth Blau, whose local restaurant interests include Honey Salt, Made L.V. and Andiron Steak & Sea in the west valley and Buddy V's Ristorante at the Grand Canal Shoppes; Hubert Keller of Fleur and Burger Bar at Mandalay Bay; Rick Moonen of R.M. Seafood and Rx Boiler Room at Mandalay Bay; Sam Marvin of Echo & Rig at Tivoli Villge; and Carla Pellegrino of Bratalian in Henderson. Pop-up participants with restaurants in other cities are Duff Goldman of Baltimore and Los Angeles; Steve Samson of Los Angeles; Adam Sobel of New York; and John Tesar of Dallas.

The Culinary Village will be expanded this year, with displays at three of the music stages. Among the participating restaurants (in addition to many of those listed above) will be Aloha Kitchen, Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken, Culinary Dropout, Eat, Siegel's 1941, Garden Grill, Gimme Some Sugar, Hash House A Go Go, Hearthstone Kitchen & Cellar, Itsy Bitsy Ramen & Whisky, Jun's Korean Restaurant, Kuma Snow Cream, Makers & Finders Coffee, MTO Cafe, N9NE Steakhouse, Nacho Daddy, Nobu, Origin India Restaurant & Bar, Pot Liquor Contemporary American Smokehouse, The Lab Real Hawaiian Shave Ice, Truffles & Bacon Cafe, VegeNation and Yellowtail Japanese Restaurant & Lounge, plus more than a dozen food trucks.

The festival also will have a beer garden with two dozen craft beers, as well as beverage offerings including more than 35 specialty cocktails, a variety of frozen cocktails, wines and more craft beers.

For tickets and more information, visit lifeisbeautiful.com.

Contact Heidi Knapp Rinella at Hrinella@reviewjournal.com. Find more of her stories atreviewjournal.com and bestoflasvegas.com and follow @HKRinella on Twitter.