When it’s hot outside you might cool off with an ice-cold drink, but a new bar in New York puts its patrons on ice.
The frosty new addition to Manhattan’s bar scene is called Minus 5. That is how cold it is inside – minus 5 Celsius. About 50 people can fit into the bar located at the New York Hilton. There they can sip on vodka-based concoctions in meltable ice glasses.
Robert Olivieri from the often steamy city of Dallas agreed to try the wintery ice bar on a whim. “Clearly it’s not a normal bar,” he said. “This is pretty cool so far. I’ve never really been in anything like this, but the cold doesn’t really bother me too much. It’s pretty cool.”
Olivieri’s ok with the cold because the $20 cover charge comes with a different sort of cover, winter parkas and gloves. Once inside patrons admire the ice walls etched with trees, as they can sit on ice benches lined with deer skins.
“The ice sculptures are beautiful and we just came because out feet were cold,” said Theresa Buccellato from New York. “We just came to warm up a little bit and then we’re going to go back in.”
Guests are welcome to stay as long as they like, but given the polar temperature most usually only stay about 45 minutes.
And with the steady stream of visitors and all that added body heat, it takes more than a typical restaurant freezer to keep the bar’s 250 pound blocks of ice from melting.
“We put a couple of million dollars into some serious computerized refrigeration equipment that really take into effect ambient heat, body heat, humidity, summertime, wintertime, volume of people coming in and out,” said Noel Bowman, President of Minus5 Management Company. “It’s a science to keep this whole environment, no window, humidity at the right temperature.”
A New Zealander came up with the idea for Minus 5. Craig Ling took the design from a Russian vodka bar with an ice interior, and applied the concept to an entire bar. From there the ice bars spread to Australia, Las Vegas, Nevada and now New York.
After the summer heat wave, the ice bar will likely still have customers especially in the freezing New York winters when people are already dressed for the cold.