It seems hardly the coziest of settings but a new restaurant in Harbin City, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, is enjoying a roaring trade.
Customers are greeted with a frosty reception as soon as they walk through the doors at the eatery, which is solely made of ice.
Not surprisingly, one of the most popular choices is eating "huoguo" hotpot.
The restaurant, located on the Sun Island, a tourism resort north of the Songhua River, which traverses Harbin from west to east, is arousing huge interest among visitors to the area.
Covering a space of some 260 square meters, the eatery is completely built with ice brick walls, a vaulted ice dome and ice tables and stools.
The outside feature of this sub-zero architecture is of European design, while its interior decoration is Chinese style, with ice sculptures of traditional legendary figures dotted inside.
"We hope to provide visitors to Sun Island with a completely new and unforgettable experience," said Liu Jianguo, sales manager of the Post Hotel, which operates the ice restaurant.
An Ice and Snow Sculpture Art Exhibition is now on show at Sun Island and the ice restaurant is undoubtedly an eye-catching highlight of the event.
It took workers more than 20 days to finish the construction, using some 800 cubic meters of ice, according to Liu.
The restaurant can hold some 100 people, with six large tables in the main hall and an adjacent separate room.
The most vivid design is the ice bar counter, where customers can sit on the ice stools while sipping hot drinks.
The main food offered in the restaurant is the traditional northeast China's hotpot, with families or groups of friends sitting around a table to eat from a steaming pot in the middle.
But customers are advised to wear their thick winter clothes while enjoying the "extreme delicacy."
Thick carpet is laid on the floor to restrict the cold air from the ice floor below and the ice stools are all covered with woolen cushions.
"Of course, we aim to attract them to sit down not to freeze them," said Liu.
Liu said there was no need to worry about the hot air produced by the steaming hotpot melting the ice dome as it is very high up.
There are also two ventilation holes in the roof to make sure the temperature in the restaurant always remains below zero.
The average temperature in the restaurant is about -10 ˚C, Liu said.
"We ask our waiters to get the ingredients ready as fast as they can as we don't want our customers to wait with empty stomachs in this chilly environment," he said.
"But once you take one bite of the steaming delicacies, you would definitely forget the cold," he said.
The restaurant is offering four special hotpot dishes, with some ingredients which can be rarely seen in common hotpot restaurants, such as meat of wild boar and deer, gnosis and ginseng, he said.
The average cost for a customer is about 100 yuan (US$12), he said.
For some customers, just being in the chilly environment is an experience in itself.
"This is even my first time to see ice and snow, who could believe that I am eating in an ice restaurant?" said Li Hong, a customer from southwest China's Sichuan Province.
"Aren't we like the modern Eskimos?" she said.
(China Daily December 29, 2005)
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