Roly poly fish heads

On Thursday night, my first night in Qingdao, my host took me to a Qingdao seafood restaurant for dinner - apprently one of the best in the city. We arrived at a building situated right on the shore, with garish flashing neon lights (like every building any any major Chinese city).

Once shown to our table, we were instructed that there were no menus, and that we had to walk through another series of rooms to select our meal. A daintly Chinese hostess with mobile phone in hand led us to the first area: the smoked meats. Did we want any smoked duck heads? If so, we were to simply point at the ones that looked most delicious.

We declined the smoked meats (We are here for seafood!) and went to the sea cucumber section. In the middle of a giant display was a large, shallow tupperware full of live sea cucumbers. Around the tub were plates with plastic sea cucumbers adorning other plastic versions of foods. Sea cucumber prepared with noodles? Sea cucumber in a fancy papaya? Take your pick!

We picked none and went to the live fish area. We stared at a wall of tanks for a while and watched dinner swim around. My host selected a nice-looking fella, and a man came over to scoop him up and weigh him. Once confirmed that we wanted to eat this guy, my host explained how we would like it prepared and he headed off.

We stopped next at the shellfish section and selected a few clams, scallops and some other tube-like guys. We passed on all the crabs, lobsters and scorpions. Yes, scorpions! About a dozen scorpions were in a tub, crawling around a brick. I did not dare get too close.

We breezed through the tame noodle and dumpling land where bowls of plastic noodles and plates of plastic dumplings were supposed to entice us. At vegetable land, we selected some leafy greens and headed to soup land, our final destination. We'd selected enough food, so we went to sit down.

The meal was quite delicious and we definitely ordered way too much food. The total meal, with rice and beverages, came to approximately USD$40. A pretty good deal for some very fresh food!