Last year, Chanticleer owner Jeff Stahl completed an addition, which included an ice carving freezer, a Clinebell Crystal Clear Block freezer and other equipment, all of which enable Stahl to create ice sculptures year-round. (Photo by Holly Eitenmiller/for Chronicle Media)

For a few days in February, the Marty the Moose ice sculpture enjoyed the frigid temperatures outside the Chanticleer restaurant on Main Street in Eureka. Then it warmed up, and he became Puddles the Moose.

Chanticleer owner, chef and professional ice sculptor, Jeff Stahl, completed a 2,500-square-foot addition to the restaurant last fall, which included an ice sculpting studio outfitted with a Laguna CNC router, a Clinebell Crystal Clear ice block freezer and a walk-in freezer workshop.

Along with the Chanticleer, Stahl now operates Arctic Dimensions, a venture that stems from an ice sculpting career spanning more than 25 years.

But It’s been nearly 10 years since Stahl has regularly created ice sculptures.

“We didn’t do ice here until August,” Stahl said. “I’ve done a few sculptures since ‘09, but I’ve been mostly out of ice sculpting since we bought the restaurant.”

Shortly after graduating from Eureka High School in 1984, Stahl enrolled at Joliet Junior College, a school that has a nationally-honored prestigious culinary program.

“Not all culinary schools teach ice sculpting, but this one did,” Stahl said. “We had a chef instructor who took us to different events to compete. I kind of took it a little further than culinary.”

“A little further” may be an understatement. In 1998, Stahl relinquished his chef’s job and assembled one of the top 10 ice sculpting teams in the nation. By the time he moved back to Eureka with his wife Shelli, Stahl’s list of accomplishments included an impressive list of corporate and competitive achievements.

Stahl carved ice bars for corporate sponsors such as Grey Goose and Three Olives vodkas, Patron Tequila, and Corona beer. These ice bars served patrons on the cobblestones at the Kentucky Derby, Super Bowl XLIII and Nascar events.

Other corporate sponsors include the Indiana Colts, Holiday Inn, Marriott, Miami and Shell Oil Company. Along with ice bars, Stahl has created drink luges, wine racks, fountains, sushi bars and sculptures as tall as 28 feet.

In addition to ice, he also sculpts snow and builds rocking and carousel horses. “I don’t carve stumps,” he clarified.

At the beginning of February, Chanticleer owner Jeff Stahl featured an ice sculpture, “Marty the Moose,” near the Eureka restaurant’s entrance. Stahl learned to carve ice in culinary school and became one of the nation’s top ice carvers. (Photo by Holly Eitenmiller/for Chronicle Media)

Stahl is hired for weddings, festivals, and various celebrations and local events. A modest personalized sculpture will cost around $350. An ice bar, $2,500, a reasonable price considering the craftsmanship and creativity involved in the process.

As Marty the Moose was melting, Stahl was working on a Pyeongchang 2018 Olympics sculpture, featuring a 2-foot-high ice stand and a colorful centerpiece. Stahl uses gelatin to incorporate color into his sculptures.

In the three-day process of making ice blocks in the double-block Clinebell, he also incorporates a variety of items, like liquor bottles, fruit and essentially anything that can fit in a 20- by-40-by-10 inch ice block.

“We use reverse osmosis water, and it freezes from the bottom up. That allows us to encase products in the ice,” he explained. “Filters keep bubbles from forming, then we use a small crane to harvest the ice.”

The ice blocks rise from the freezers as clear as water. There’s no need, he said, to create larger ice blocks. Stahl works the larger sculptures, like Marty, in layers.

“We built this on and now we have a small ice sculpting studio, we’re trying to service weddings, and we did a wedding three weeks ago, doing an Olympic ice carving for an Olympic party,” Stahl said. “The restaurant keeps us hopping, but I’d like to do more sculptures.”

The Stahls are the third owners of the restaurant since it opened in the 1940s. In addition to an ice sculpting studio, they also added an office, a meat-cutting cooler, a catering kitchen and a meat smoker.