The Food in Qing Dao

A lot of friends told me that the sea food is very good in Qing Dao...Well, I had put it in a low expectation as I had been to Qing Dao in 1980 and 1982 whilst I was working for China's merchant vessel serving between China, Japan and North Korea. The way Shan Dong people cook is very much different with the Southern Chinese. As a Typical choosy Shu De snob, we are poor as we spent lot of money on food.
I had been a few restrurant, I was totally disappointed as their food is salty, oily, and had not pre-treatment on the meat that we used for getting away for the natural smell of the meat or sea shell...As for certain pork, we use to drop it in hot water for a while before we stew it... We used a lot of ginger and Chinese onion for sea food like crab and shrimp, as for Muton and beef, I heard that there is  away to get away on their smell.
I mean  like mutton, I can not get used to that kind of smell, it is pungent, it it even classisied inedible..
According to Wikipea explanation.
Lamb — a young sheep under 12 months of age which does not have any permanent incisor teeth in wear.
Hogget — a young male sheep or maiden ewe having no more than two permanent incisors in wear.
Mutton — a female (ewe) or castrated male (wether) sheep having more than two permanent incisors in wear.
I went to this so called "Hong Kong Chef" East Ocean Restaurant that is a 4 stories, 8 beautiful young women with four at each side of the entrance to welcome your visit. A big pool for various types of live fishes, lobster and prawns, and some rare sea species in the main hall,
We had two bottle of Qing Dao beer and we started ordering as from the captain's recommendations;
Roasted Duck in Hong Kong Style
Beaf steak (Japanese Beef)
Tao Foo (Bean curb) in Chiu Chow sauce
Fat Till Cheung ( Buddha jumps from the wall)
Fried Lotus Trunk cut out
From the attached pictures, if you are Hong Kong People, you will be able to tell how BAD the food is cooked, I am sure that the Chef is not from Hong Kong, as we do not put starch on the Fat Tilll Cheung as that will give you a sticky tougne and would cover you taste bud for soup. They had these ingredient normally in the soup: Fish stomach, dried gallop, Shark fin, sea cucumber, Abalone, and some old chicken, but in this restaurant, they do not put the old chicken, instead they used a big portion of octopus...I know the chef;s intention, he want to make the soup tasted "sweet" but he should use Chicken instead of Octopus as I think I will not eat Octopus as for it high cholesterol content. And if he wants to make teh soup more appealingm he can used dried squid as one of the soup base... but I still think the old Chicken is best...

So at the end of the dinner, I did not eat at all any of the roasted duck as it could not pass the nose Test!
The Tao Foo is soaked in 4mm thick oil that Shocked me... I did no take it
The Beef is Ok as they are real good Japanese Beef, but I hate the way they put the pepper which took away all the natural favour of the juicy meat!
The Lotus trunk was a disaster... as the sauce was sweet and too much sesame oil.
at last I had to order a plate of Fried Rice to keep my empty stomach a bit feeling of "Food taken"
The bill showed me RMB$847.00!
I do nto think that is a good course, and even the captain did not ask us why so many left behind..So this is the reaosn this restaurant is not sucessful as they do not CARE customer's feedback.

In Short, QingDao has all kinds of sea food, material for cooking, but they do not have the chef, they do not have the demanding customers, they do not know What Good Food is...
Of course, that is my last time to go... sorry...no more.... I had a feeling that I was ripped off....

HK Snob