Ocean Sky Restaurant
Ocean Sky Restaurant
1601 Chambers St
Eugene, OR
(541) 342-4848
Eugenified.com rating: 
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Anyone who knows anything about Chinese food has heard of oyster sauce. It’s a very basic sauce that is used frequently in Cantonese food, but it’s also a staple in most other regional variations of Chinese food. The key is to use oyster sauce as a minimal base (and thickening agent) while adding some other spices to bring da flavor. Well, apparently, the head chef at Ocean Oyster Sauce Sky missed that day of cooking class. Now, if this was a network TV sitcom, the wacky hijinks would shortly thereafter ensue. This is not a network TV sitcom.
Let’s cut to the chase with this one. Every single dish at Oyster Sauce Sky is made with oyster sauce. Usually in a ratio of 75:25, i.e. 75% oyster sauce and 25% meat/veggies. If you like oyster sauce, then this is the place for you. It’s oystersautabulous! (Copyright 2009, Eugenified.com) Because of this oyster-sauce-centric thinking, all of the dishes at Oyster Sauce Sky look nearly identical. If you think I’m exaggerating (moi?!), take a gander at the wall of sixty or so 8×10′ menu photos near the cash register. As your eyes glaze over, your brain may briefly note that every one of the dishes is a brownish gray glutenous pile with something else added. You can’t tell from the picture what the something else is, so you’ll have to read the name of the dish to solve this little mystery.
Illustrative Anecdote: While jogging on Fern Ridge Path, I once saw a 900 gallon tanker truck of oyster sauce back up to Oyster Sauce Sky and hook up a fire hose to pump oyster sauce into the kitchen. After the 900 gallon sauce pumping was complete, the driver of the truck stepped out of the vehicle to reverently deliver one tiny ziplock baggy of Five Spice powder. So…yeah…I guess that pretty much proves they use tons of oyster sauce and very little other seasoning. (The preceding anecdote was false and used for illustrative purposes only).
Other issues: The main dishes at Oyster Sauce Sky are reasonably priced especially when you consider that the serving plates are the size of large trash can lids. But probably it would make more sense to compare the price of each dish versus 2.5 bottles of retail oyster sauce. And even in that respect, they are reasonably priced. Although it seems like the restaurant would only break even since the price of 2.5 bottles of oyster sauce is about the same as one platter of food at Oyster Sauce Sky. Probably the restaurant gets a discount on oyster sauce when they buy 900 gallons, so they can still make a profit. Bankruptcy averted.
With all of this oyster sauce talk, I should point out that oyster sauce often contains MSG, especially the 900 gallon bulk oyster sauce that restaurants tend to use. So when they claim “No MSG” on the menu or on the little sign by the door, what they might really mean is:
“No MSG added by our direct staff, but there might actually be plenty of MSG in the oyster sauce, but since we did not put it there, we can claim ignorance, and anyways, MSG makes you feel like everything tastes great, plus all you hypochondriacs who claim you are allergic to MSG are really just coddled infants, and we will prove it to you by surreptitiously slipping MSG into your food, and then we’ll see if you really are allergic to MSG or just a big baby.”
They probably don’t print that on the menus or the little signs by the door since it would be so difficult to fit so many words.
Service: Have you ever been to state-owned factory canteen in mainland China in the late 1980′s? Well, then you know what the service is like at Oyster Sauce Sky. It’s bad. Really bad. They often do the famous “place food on the table while looking in the other direction to convey their disdain for this manual labor” move. You can do a similar move when you leave them their 5% tip, although the irony may not be fully evident to them.
Oyster Sauce Sky is often compared with Lok Yaun as the worst large-scale Chinese restaurant in Eugene (Tom’s Tea House “wins” hands down among small-scale Chinese restaurants), but really, it is not a fair comparison. One of them is selling bulk oil (Lok Yaun) while the other is selling bulk oyster sauce (Oyster Sauce Sky…come to think of it, they really chose their name wisely…can’t accuse them of false advertising). So let’s just say they both excel at what they do.
Summary: If you want to buy bulk oyster sauce, then Oyster Sauce Sky is the place to go. Plus they offer giant servings delivered to your table with a disturbing air of malcontent. What else could you ask for?!
Eugenified.com rating:
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August 22nd, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Last Spring when my husband and I were new comers in Eugene, we found this place amazing because the dish served there is delicious & huge. And most of all, fresh steam whole fish is available in their regular menu. Hoo hoo!
As a fish lover, I thought finally I found my “comfort food” here to cure my nostalgia. And it did work for a while until I became a regular customer….
To treat my nostalgia, my husband took me to Ocean Sky once a week to get my steam whole fish. But gradually I found their fish quality is not stable. Fresh or not, it depended on my luck. Eventually I got tired of having to try out my luck and so gave up on the fish.
Without the fish I still like their other dish, such as sauteed spinach, Mongolia beef, Gong Bao chicken, and chow mein. But for the past 3 months or so, I have started to develop this odd symptom of having diarrhea after coming back from Ocean Sky…
I’m not sure what’s going on with this “thing”. Now I always have to fight myself to decide to visit Ocean Sky or not when I crave Chinese food. I love Chinese food but don’t want to get diarrhea. Anyone with the same problem?
August 22nd, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Could be straight oyster sauce going directly through.
Thanks for the feedback!
August 25th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
bad food bad food bad food. I will not go back there unless my friends drag me there again. And I will kick and scream all the way there. plus the service is terrible. Why are those ladies so rude and angry? What did I do?
Hope you can review Kowloon Restaurant sometime. It is not very good for eat in, but take home is delicious. You will also like the clean kitchen.
January 15th, 2010 at 10:04 pm
I loved going there because the food tasted good but one day my brother-in-law saw a big rat scurry across the floor. Ever since when we want to eat chinese we say you want to go to the rat restaurant? We still go sometimes but look all around to see if there is anything scurrying around. I hope it is safe to eat there.
January 16th, 2010 at 12:00 am
All meat tastes the same when cooked with oyster sauce.
January 24th, 2010 at 9:43 am
Best Chinese food found off I-5 from Salem to Redding! Salt and pepper squid, steamed fish, Chinese greens, tomato pepper beef rocks! We have been eating there since 1991!
January 24th, 2010 at 9:56 am
Charles, you have no clue what Chinese food should taste like…but you do have a good sense of humor! (I saw your funny fake email address)
February 10th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
I’m sorry to read these negative reviews about Ocean Sky. When I first moved to Eugene in 1983 from the SF Bay Area, there were, like, ZERO Chinese restaurants here. Well, there were a couple, but they were pretty bad. I remember one on 11th near Sacred Heart, now mercifully gone, was particularly vile.
Then Ocean Sky opened (1984? 85? I don’t remember exactly), and when I tried it, I sang hallelujah. This was what I was looking for. The food served at Ocean Sky had the delicate flavors that I remember from the great Chinese food I had in Bay Area Chinese restaurants. I thought I was in heaven. I ate there regularly for a number of years, then moved to another part of town that was too far away make the trip often.
I heard Ocean Sky had maybe changed hands a while back. Maybe their food quality took a hit because of that. As I said, I’m sorry to hear that, because I have nothing but good memories of their food.
March 7th, 2010 at 7:08 am
I have lived in Eugene for over 30 years, born and raised in Hawaii where good , mediocre , and bad Chinese restaurents exist. The bad ones don’t last very long because most of the Chinese residents won’t go there since they have more discrimanating taste. In the old days, 30 years ago here, there were not a whole lot of good Chinese restaurants due to the limited supply of fresh ingredients for the dishes. Times have changed and the access to these ingredients have become more available. Ocean Sky was one of the better Chinese restaurants when it first opened up , lost the original cooks, went down hill for a few years, and since then has improved its quality . Some of the older Chinese restaurnts like Louies, Lok Yaun etc have very bland Americanized (as we call it) food. One of the ways to find out if the food is somewhat authentic is to see how many native Chinese students patronize that restaurant. They will know how authentic it is and if the food ingredients are fresh. This is really the major factors because the quality may vary depending on the availabiliy and price. A good rule of thumb is if you don’t see a lot of Chinese patrons, and you are looking for authentic food, don’t go there.
August 23rd, 2010 at 9:01 am
Personally, I would not trust the old “how many Chinese people eat here?” theory of picking Chinese restaurants in Eugene. In other cities, this method works great because there actually is a range of bad to good Chinese restaurants. Unfortunately, in Eugene, we only have bad Chinese restaurants. As a result, you will see plenty of Chinese students in Maple Garden (yuk!) and Tom’s Tea House (barf!).