Given Sanya's tropical climate and location at China's southernmost point, there's something perverse about the current craze for hotpots here - though if you're after northern food, the Dongbei Ren restaurant at Dadonghai is exceptionally good, somewhere to try traditional Manchurian sautéed corn kernels with pine nuts, steamed chicken with mushrooms, or eggs and black fungus (and they even have an English menu). Alternatively, the Pressed Mutton Restaurant over in the city on Jiangang Lu is airy and down-to-earth but unsettling, with the sheep kept in pens around the back; you order meat by weight and again eat it as a northern-style hotpot.

For a more local flavour, alfresco night stalls at Dadonghai and around Sanya's main market are the best places to try seafood (eel, squid, sea slugs, reef fish, crab and scallops) - fix prices first. Dadonghai has the cheapest sit-down restaurants, with some very clean, open-fronted places offering basically the same food as the stalls but in more comfort and at higher prices. Incidentally, all seafood here comes from Indonesia and the Philippines - Sanya's marine fauna is long fished out. Westernized food can be found at the Coconut, a foreigner-friendly café-restaurant at Dadonghai with inaccurately translated menus, Chinese and Western meals, beer and loud music.