A CHRISTCHURCH bar has marked its first three months of being open with a 'fire noodle challenge'.

Cocktail bar and dim sum venue The Tea House in Church Street opened its doors on December 1.

Owner Nathan Muirhead said: "We've only been open for three months now, so it's nice to have events like this, where we can showcase what we're about and also bring the community together particularly after 18 months of people being stuck in, so it's really nice to let our hair down a little bit and do something fun.

"The first three months have been a challenging start. We thought Christmas was going to be really good but we have other businesses in the hospitality sector they've all seen the same sort of custom, which has been a significant drop since we came out of lockdown in the summer.

"But since January we've just been getting busier and busier and we're delighted that we're fully booked for next month, which is amazing, we're really chuffed at how well the community has accepted us."

"We describe ourselves as inquisitive and curious, so we're a cocktail and dim sum bar, by day we're serving Japanese, Chinese and Thai dim sum food and then on the evenings we're open until 2am every day serving freshly made cocktails.

"What we do pride ourselves on being most is just a very relaxed and chilled vibe, there's no pretension here or snobbishness or poshness, it's just fun and Friday nights and Saturdays nights here are just brilliant.

"We have our normal events like Mothers Day and Pancake Day but we are keen to do more events like this. We have an Asian staffed kitchen so we will definitely be doing the fire challenge again and I think the first one tonight's gone down really well, people enjoyed it.

"We know we can go another notch up now and hopefully work our way to the Christchurch food festival in June, I'm hoping that we can do something particularly special for that."

The Tea Houses 'fire noodle challenge' saw members of the public compete to finish a bowl of spicy noodles to be in with the chance of winning £100, the first person to finish a bowl of fire noodles won.

On Thursday, March 24, the bar is planning to host a second fire noodle challenge, which they say will be even bigger and even hotter.