Classic Stir-fried Beef with Oyster Sauce

This was perhaps one of the most popular dishes served at our family restaurant. Oyster sauce made the mundane sliced beef appealingly exotic. Our patrons, of course, did not really know precisely what it was about oyster sauce that made it so appetizing and savoury. Perhaps they thought is was a Chinese-American ‘surf and turf’ (lobster and steak).

Oyster sauce is made from stewed oysters enlivened with various seasonings, such as garlic and chilli, adding up to a taste that is mea