No one was injured in Thursday's fire at the Hooters in Dartmouth. (CBC)

A fire has left the Hooters restaurant in Dartmouth looking very much like the scorched "inside of a wood stove."

Firefighters encountered heavy smoke as they arrived at the building on Main Street just after 7 a.m. Thursday.

"Visibility was zero," said platoon chief Chuck Bezanson of the Halifax regional fire service. "The windows are broken in the top of the building, and that is to get the smoke and the heat out to make their job a little easier."

Bezanson said it appears the fire started near a waitress station on the main floor, but it's too early to say for sure what happened.

"There's not much left, so we really have to find out," he told reporters.

No one was in the restaurant at the time and no one was injured. Paramedics were at the scene, but Bezanson said it's standard procedure when firefighters enter a burning building.

Extensive damage to the main floor and upper mezzanine level means the restaurant will probably be closed for a while, he said.

When asked what the building looks like inside, Bezanson said it was "nasty" and described it as "the inside of a wood stove."

"It's a lot of wood planking in there," he explained.

Firefighters were still cutting through walls looking for hot spots nearly two hours later. A fire investigator was on the way.

This wasn't the first fire at the building. Bezanson said he couldn't comment on the previous blazes, but he said an alarm that went off in the restaurant recently was likely not connected to Thursday's fire.

The restaurant, part of an international chain known for its voluptuous servers in tight T-shirts and shorts, opened in 2008.