Beijing Boyce

Traces of Austin Powers, The Jetsons and Laugh In come together fabulously in Zeta, a lounge and dance club that opened Monday as part of Hilton Hotel’s US$18 million upgrade. Pronounced Zee-tah, the place has eye candy galore, with sherbet oranges and antifreeze blues, groovy chairs, a twisty bar and plush carpet, and sculpted columns supporting a lofty roof zigzagged by spotlights and festooned with enough shiny stuff to keep chrome fetishists in heaven. Add in a toilet with bird cage-like stalls, a private room with backlit lemon-colored walls, and a balcony — up a wide spiral staircase — with a parrot’s-eye view of this rainbow riot, and Zeta is as must-see as a venue gets in Beijing. I popped in Tuesday night with The Flash and ran into the Hilton’s Chris Roberts, who said the default music is house (live DJs) and the alcohol focus is Champagne, wine and cocktails, though others drinks are available (case in point: I was the first to ever have a Budweiser there, another milestones in my life.) As for cocktails, the Manhattan was decent, the Wasabi and Sashimi Martini less potent than expected (though interesting), and the Zeta Long Island permeated with apricot. The only low-point: the standard martini with lemon twist was an unsatisfying marriage of vodka and vermouth. Prices are at five-star hotel levels — 75 kuai and up, with the complimentary bowls of wasabi peanuts nearly the size of small rowboats — and listed on a cylindrical menu the size of three stacked martini glasses and encircled with a wide plastic ring that slides its length and “decodes” the otherwise blurry text. This is an impressive place with the potential to make a major mark on the Beijing bar scene. Decor: A. Music: A-. Drinks: Need improvement (and yes, I realize it is early days). The will-power needed to avoid including that overworked Austin Powers phrase “Yeah, Baby!” in this write-up: sheer.

(From Beijing Boyce XXI, first emailed on July 27, 2006)