Serving imperial banquet fare such as Peking duck, braised sea cucumber and sweetmeats incuding sugared crabapples, this intriguing restaurant was once a royal refrigerator, its arched stone cellars built to store oversized ice cubes cut from the lake at Beihai Park. Dining in the cellars themselves is discouraged (which is a shame as the main room lacks atmosphere), but you're free to explore.
Chinese medicinal liquor and rice wine is sold in three-liang jugs (150ml) – you'll see them suspended in pig bladders or stored in clay jars. To find Royal Icehouse, go south along Gongjian Hutong from Di'anmen Xidajie for a few hundred metres then take a turn right into 5 Gongjian Wuxiang.
This icehouse was apparently still in use up to the early 1950s.
