Fresh from the sea

Vasco's Champagne Sunday brunch is a high-end seafood feast, which includes Alaskan king crabs, baby lobster and whole tuna. [Photos by Ye Jun/China Daily]

Phoenix-tail shrimps offered by Shunfeng restaurant.[Photos by Ye Jun/China Daily]

'Tis the best time to savor the freshest seafood, with a few high-end restaurants in Beijing offering irresistible deals. Ye Jun gives the rundown.

Fresh seafood, washed down by a freezing bottle of beer - nothing can be more refreshing than this to beat Beijing's summer heat. There is more good news: Some high-end seafood restaurants have recently reduced their prices so that more people can enjoy a decent meal.

One such restaurant is Hai Bin Wei Dao (literally, taste of seashore). It serves more than 100 varieties of fresh seafood, from Qingdao, a famous coastal city in Shandong province which is also known for its quality Tsingdao beer.

The restaurant gets its supply of seafood every day between 10 pm and 6 am, so that guests can taste the freshest fish and shellfish at their lunch or dinner tables.

With fresh seafood, cooking can be very simple. For example, clams stir-fried with a bit of chilies. It is Qingdao people's favorite dish with beer.

Scallops are best steamed to maintain their sweetness, and then topped with fried ginger and shallot.

The coastal city also produces mussels, oysters and red clams.

Some fish, according to the restaurant's manager Shang Jianhui, are not so commonly seen in Beijing.

You can take a look at some of them in an iron-pot stewed hodgepodge, which has "braid fish", "red-head fish", pomfret and yellow croaker. These fish (not farm-raised) are served with a plate of homemade flour cake.

"Buddha jumps over the wall" soup is a Fujian-style delicacy with a mixture of expensive seafood. The soup could cost up to several hundred yuan a pot. But at Hai Bin Wei Dao, it is priced at only 88 yuan ($14), quality uncompromised.