Haven for Beijing's seafood lovers

Hai Bin Wei Dao (Seashore Flavor) Restaurant is a haven for seafood lovers. Its dishes are drawn from Shandong's Qingdao, a seaside city, and come at very reasonable prices.

"Buddha jumps over the wall" soup would cost a fortune elsewhere, but is priced at only 68 yuan ($10) per person here. The soup has a variety of ingredients slow-cooked, including sea cucumber, shark's fin, abalone, fish maw and pork tendon.

Sea urchin is steamed with egg. Poached clams are served fresh and imaginatively. Big-sized oysters come steamed and flavored with mashed garlic.

The eatery offers quite a few "mountain treasures" from Qingdao's Laoshang Mountain - famous for its Taoist beliefs - such as dried mushrooms and mountain ginseng.

Another specialty of the restaurant established in 1925 is jiaozi with seafood stuffing. In Shandong, mackerel has traditionally been used as a tasty stuffing for jiaozi. But the restaurant has developed the variety of stuffings to include yellow croaker, inkfish, prawn, sea cucumber and abalone.

Decoration is ordinary, with live seafood in tanks, and pictures of Qingdao on the walls. The average bill is 100 yuan per person.