(Beijing weekend)
Updated: 2007-04-28 09:41

Beijing's pretty things agree that Cutie Club is a hot spot for the lovely women.

Management says the name is meant to market toward the capital's beautiful babes, and they descend in droves nightly.

But as for atmosphere, expect the expected: curtained private booths, box-lit frosted glass tables and a bar perfectly centered in the main room. As the last addition to the Gongti Xilu strip mall of mega-clubs, this club took all of the conventions its neighbors developed through a lot of trial and error and a good amount of copying and mixed them together better.

But in the way that people make a house a home, Cutie's occupants make the establishment a decent nightspot.

While Beijing's bartenders seem to need to know more than how to concoct a cocktail these days, Cutie's wait staff has earned a special reputation as particularly talented entertainers. Among Cutie's multitalented mix-masters work jugglers and flame-blowers, and the crowd gets especially fired up when the club's talented tipple-smiths saturate a small trough inset from the periphery of the bar with alcohol and strike a match.

Between such super stunts, these bartenders dole out beers for 30 yuan and cocktails running from 60-200 yuan.

Paradoxically, while Cutie's drink list is the priciest on the Gongti strip, it attracts a T-shirt-and-jeans crowd, rather than the usual, overdressed suspects who hit the strip to flash and splash cash.

While the club's mostly Chinese crowd gets loud to hip-hop and house, they stop their hurly burly early. So, Cutie is a good stop for the beginning leg of a night out, as the building begins to empty out long before its neighbors.

Those looking for the best blend of what the minds behind Beijing's nightclub scene have been formulating will absolutely adore Cutie.

Daily 9pm-late.
Address:8 Gongti Xilu, Chaoyang District.
Tel:010-6552-9988.