Three disco balls hang over the cocktail bar, and spotlights rotate blue, green, yellow and orange onto the ceiling. There are tiki cocktails, pink walls, and a swirling mural emblazoned on the wall with the Nora Ephron quote, "Take your broken heart and make it into art."

It's racy stuff for a seaside village that barely has a traffic light.

But as the owners say, "restaurants should be an escape, an experience, a journey; not just a place to eat, pay and leave", and so far, the sleepy village of Ettalong Beach is coping well.

Rupert Noffs and Matty Bennett are almost-locals anyway, after three years in nearby Hardys Bay. Before that, it was the bright lights of New York, where they opened the original Lucky Bee in 2016.

Now the busy little Bee has landed on the site of Nicola Coccia's wood-fired, one-hatted Osteria il Coccia, which has relocated closer to the water, adjacent to the Mantra hotel.

Lucky Bee's fresh, bright, pan-Asian, cocktail-friendly food had its genesis at Longrain in Surry Hills, wher Bennett spent six years cooking for Martin Boetz.

Bennett and head chef Drew Powers run a happy-go-lucky menu that looks casual but requires some deftness and skill to pull off consistently.

The aim, clearly, is to create a relaxing, approachable, art-lined dining space in which to give people what they want to eat.

That means kingfish ceviche, soft-shell crab steamed bao, a full range of dim sum dumplings, and major players such as whole Sichuan salt and pepper fish.

Green papaya "pok pok" salad ($22), sees a pounded som tum of slivered green papaya, snake beans, cherry tomato, tamarind and roasted peanuts; a summery mix of freshness and crunch.

Be warned, some of the dishes listed under "small" are not at all small, such as a stonehenge pile of fried eggplant ($23) in tangy three-flavour caramel that's crisp outside and creamy inside.

House-made dumplings such as scallop siu mai ($21) come in fives rather than the usual three. They're nice and fresh, sent out in their steamer under a shower of fried shallots and chilli, just so you know where you are. Even the duck spring rolls ($21) come in fives.

Likewise, those dishes listed under "large" are just that. Rather than getting the usual default red beef curry of sliced meat swimming in a pool of sauce, the giant slab of slow-braised, red-curried Cape Grim beef cheek ($46) sits like a wobbling, gelatinous hippo in a waterhole.

Use a fork to shred the beef into the rich, dark, well-balanced sauce, high on galangal and lemongrass and not overly rich with coconut milk.

Rather than weigh the beef down with structure and tannin, it needs something as bright and fresh as the 2022 Ghost Rock "Supernatural" pinot noir ($15/$70) from Northern Tasmania's Cradle Coast.

Convention dictates a chef can have only one signature dish (banks also frown on anyone having multiple signatures), but there appear to be several here that can't leave the menu.

Line-caught snapper is used for a variation on the classic Thai whole deep-fried fish ($68), accompanied by nam prik, pickled ginger and rice.

It's quite spectacular, the fish filleted, crumbed, seasoned with Sichuan salt and pepper and deep-fried, before being reassembled back on the curved fish bones.

I'm not convinced it's a better strategy than cooking the whole thing as one, but it does make it easier to scoff. Crisp-skinned, Bangkok-style roast chicken (half, $38) is a top dish, freshened up with more nam prik, leaves of butter lettuce and cucumber.

You can end on ice-cream or sorbet, or, indeed, a spicy margarita ($22), as many do. It's that cheeky, inclusive mix of sweet, sour and salty that protects Lucky Bee from feeling dated.

That, and the up-for-a-chat owners, soul music, good value and commitment to a restaurant being more than a place to eat, pay and leave. All that and disco balls, too.

The low-down

The Lucky Bee

14/20

Drinks Serious cocktail action and nine organic and vegan wines

Vibe Mix-and-match Asian food with a disco vibe

Go-to dish Thai red curry of slow-braised beef cheek, $46