Marinated garlic with scallop. [Photo provided to China Daily]

All the flavors of the meat, gelatin and black garlic infuse in the glutinous soup base to create a distinctively warming dish－and one for which Lu Style has applied for a national patent.

Donkey hoofs are another specialty of the restaurant that have rich nutritional value, as does their signature yogurt dish, which is made from donkey milk.

Zhang and his team take a lot of effort to source the best ingredients. From the mushrooms from Jilin province and the potatoes from the Inner Mongolia autonomous region to the clams from South Korea and scallops from Japan, each ingredient is carefully selected.

There are four ingredients that are considered the freshest in rural China－the tender leaves of the deciduous Chinese toon tree, the first batch of Chinese chives, cucumbers with the flower left on and lotus roots picked after their flowers drop off.

To find the best first batch of Chinese chives, chefs from Lu Style visited seven provinces before finally sourcing the freshest ones grown in Mudanjiang, Heilongjiang province.

"The Chinese chives there grow in black soil with an 80 percent humidity, and they are planted around 15 centimeters apart to maximize their exposure to the sun," says Zhang.