Qingdao is rich in seafood, including fish, prawns,shellfish and sea weed as well as local foods from other areas. Yunxiaolu is a major restaurant area. Qingdao explodes with regional and international deliciousness. By virtue of its seafront location, seafood rightfully dominates the menus, ranging in cooking styles from spicy Sichuan to sweet and heavy Shanghai. There are also plenty of foreign fare options including Italian, German, Japanese and Korean. Prices are flexible enough to accommodate all budgets.
Shandong Cuisine is known for its excellent seafood dishes and delicious soup and presents its food (usually deep-fried, braised, roasted or stewed) with a strong emphasis on soy sauce, shallots, and garlic. Qingdao, regarded as the "cradle of Shandong cuisine", puts a spin upon the usual Shandong dishes with its concentration on seafood (sea cucumber, scallop, conch, prawn, and red porgy). Well-known dishes include "sea cucumbers stewed with shallots", "stewed salted fish" and "celery with creamy soup". Made in simple style, these dishes are available in most restaurants.
The best way to enjoy Qingdao cuisine is probably to head down to any of the many little seafood restaurants on the shore or around Laiyang Lu. For a better (and more pricey), atmosphere the hotels are a good way to taste seafood with less of the language barrier problems. The Qingdao Seafood Restaurant, on Qingyu Road, is also a more expensive, but better quality, seafood provider.
Qingdao also has a fairly large Muslim population and a couple of Muslim places are scattered about, most noticeably the Donglaishun restaurant (Donglaishun fandian) and the Qinghai Muslim Restaurant (Qinghai musilin fanzhuang, on Dexuan lu), as well as numerous meatstick (Chuanrou) sellers.
The appropriately named Korean Restaurant offers an impressive menu full of impressive Korean dishes ranging from hot pots and cold noodles to kimchi and fish cakes. And the Shimbashi Restaurant wows the taste buds with impossibly delectable Japanese dishes highlighted by blowfish, the kitchen's specialty.
McDonalds and KFC are both now resident in Qingdao, almost next door to each other near the train station.
