Steak is celebration enough for most. But the Love Shack wants more. Its prime rib sashays through the dining room emanating actual sparks, announcing to the always-packed room that whomever it lands in front of treated themselves to a glitzy bovine birthday cake. Anything less just wouldn’t make any sense. Without the sparkler stuck into its center, it would just be a steak, a simple piece of meat. And there’s no room for something so dull here.

The Love Shack opened in February as a next-door sibling to the vegetable centric “reverse steakhouse” G-love, Slabtown’s sort of culinary mascot; NorCal-trained chef Garrett Benedict serves “crusty avocados” and Cali vibes with a self-aware earnestness that makes a treat of what should be a gauche premise. The Love Shack is an apt sidekick, even if it’s easier to get a table at G-Love. Here, Benedict and executive chef Andrew Lee double down on schtick. As in kitsch, generally speaking. A steadfast commitment to the bit—any bit—is the only coherent theme tying the bingo card menus to the wonton tacos and mini ’tinis, and the central palm frond hut to the wrap of hazy Monstera wallpaper that vibrates with the low thrum of instrumental beats. The most integral affectation is the dim sum–style service: most of the menu, including several cocktails, wheels around in batches for you to graze at whim.

The catch is that it’s good. It’s not indisputably flawless or magnificently artistic, but under a whirl of Swiftie references and send ups to elote carts and steakhouses, the food is well executed. Mercifully, this is not the type of headache-inducing place that puts Instagram logos next to the most photogenic dishes on the menu. It’s ridiculous, but designed as an experience to actually have, rather than merely document online. It’s all a big ruse, but Benedict and his crew are in on the joke.

Utensils are notably absent. The phrase “finger food,” with all of its hokey connotations, describes the dishes best. The carts trolly cutesy one- or two-bite hors d’oeuvres through the dining room, like mini croissant banh mis and shrunken brioche waffles draped with gravlax, all of which are stuck like pin cushions with a maximum of garnishes, shooting microgreens, flower petals, and frizzled sage leaves out at odd angles.

In terms of recipes, the entire world is fair game. Mexican “corn ribs,” as you saw once upon a time on the internet, are styled like elotes. Assembled lettuce cups hold Thai pork laab, and those crispy wonton tuna tacos are sauced with a sticky tamarind and fish sauce nam jim jaew. A tidy mound of Indian butter paneer—like butter chicken, or chicken makhani—sits with mint chutney on a silver dollar of pita. It’s hard not to view this international cherry-picking skeptically, but these dishes in microcosm, with their appropriate names and sharply honed flavors, seem to be crafted with admiration.

A handful of enthusiastically American menu items underlay the globe-trotting, most of which, for whatever reason, have to be ordered à la carte. (This can cause some hiccups in the otherwise smooth progression of carts; one server referred to the way they shape a meal over an hour or two as a playlist of sorts.) The “flight of fries”—a cone each of straight, waffle, and curly—makes a nice New York Happy Meal if you nab a Filthy Tito’s mini martini off one of the carts. There’s also an ovoid burger called a “trick dog,” and an actual hot dog, Chicago style, whose trick is that it comes with a pickled pepper martini. Cocktails from the lengthy à la carte menu are as cheeky in theory and sophisticated in practice as the food, like the Midori-scented gin fizz that sports a proper souffléd head and the strawberry watermelon daiquiri that’s softened by a wash of clarified milk.

Most opulent, in a way that lusts for the days of smoking indoors, is the aforementioned “prime rib a la sparkles,” 16 ounces of Painted Hills rib eye in a nice pool of demi-glace. This does come with utensils, a ceremonious gold tray holding a steak knife and matching fork, as well as a ramekin of creamed horseradish with a mother of pearl spoon. To state the obvious: this isn’t a prime rib restaurant. There are no slow roasted hunks of beef floating around. Yet the dish is presented like a slice off of a giant, meltingly tender roast, something usually only possible in large quantities. Instead of investigating how they pull off this magic trick—and they absolutely do pull it off—I prefer to thrill in the mystery.

There’s only one dessert, and it’s coming by whether you feign interest in seeing the menu or not. This spring, a chocolate chip cookie covered a mini grasshopper shot; it behaved almost like a lid, with a straw stuck through its center. In essence, a milkshake. A boozy banana concoction took its place this summer, swapping in a white chocolate macadamia nut cookie akin to a Pepperidge Farm Tahoe and an impressively curled dark chocolate straw. The other dessert is an espresso martini; poured from a Kettle One tap with a smooth nitro froth, it’s as satisfyingly poisonous as a cigarette or a Diet Coke.

It’s only a half irony that this mini espresso martini may well distill the Love Shack’s charms best, despite being essentially a commercial product. The greatest skill on display in this display case of a restaurant is curation, concentrating and assembling over-sentimental, iconographic dishes and not messing them up. There’s no question that the Love Shack knows it’s over the top. How could a place with a name like that not? And yet it’s not wholly a caricature: you’re having a laugh, everything’s cute and mini and served with a wink, but you’re not at Disneyland. Like the bubblegum B-52s song it’s named for, you can see the Love Shack as a glib smattering of thin references, or you can see it as a fantastical little place where Everybody’s movin’, everybody’s groovin’ baby. It’s probably a bit of both.