As it has since its inception in 2013, Life Is Beautiful will offer a robust portfolio of culinary programming this year, with specialty offerings spreading beyond tasty vendors like Shake Shack and Afters Ice Cream and local food trucks such as Custom Pizza and Cousins Maine Lobster.

The Pizzeria will debut with a selection of local pies curated by Good Pie owner Vincent Rotolo. Cocktail School will return with seminars and tastings featuring top bartenders Bryant Jane, Joy Figueroa, Adam Rains, Juyoung Kang and more. And the Omakase Cantina also makes a comeback, with signature menus from chefs Nicole Brisson, Gina Marinelli and Alan Mardonovich.

One of the other LIB programs will be extra special this year for the local restaurant community and the friends and fans of chef Justin Kingsley Hall. The creator of Whiskey in the Wilderness and co-founder of Main St. Provisions, Hall will curate the Cookout, a live-fire demo and sampling of dishes featuring chefs from Bazaar Meat, China Poblano and Jaleo.

“I’ll be out there all three days, helping make sure those chefs from the José Andrés group have what they need, and then I’ll be cooking Saturday and Sunday on behalf of Whiskey in the Wilderness,” he says.

Hall recently stepped away from his executive chef and co-owner positions at Main St. Provisions as he continues to battle chronic pain caused by costochondritis and Tietze syndrome, a struggle that also took him away from cooking at Peyote at Fergusons Downtown early this year. If you’ve seen him manning the firepit at LIB in years past, he’s been cooking and working with an icepack strapped to his chest to keep the pain at bay.

“It’s hard to sit and figure out what you need to do to take care of yourself when you’ve got your head down in your work, and I’ve been distracted for a long time by not being healthy,” he says. “I am slowing down, I’m just doing it in stages, like an addict trying to come down.”

While he takes a well-deserved break from restaurant life, Hall is doing some consulting work for various hospitality projects, making plans to bring the Whiskey in the Wilderness pop-ups back to life next year, and revisiting a long-gestating podcast project based on travel and fireside conversations—the type you’d have at one of those pop-ups. “We’ll see what happens,” he says.

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL September 16-18. 2 p.m.-1 a.m., $180/day, $380/fest, Downtown Las Vegas, lifeisbeautiful.com.

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