[Octarine]

I sometimes go to a restaurant were they serve various dishes with a dipping sauce on the side that they call "fish sauce," but it is completely unlike any other fish sauce I have ever seen. The "fish sauce" is clear, light yellow to orange, salty, sweet, watery, and not at all fishy. The flavor is rather mild and hard to describe. It seems to have zero oil in it, because any oil that comes off of things you dip floats in beads on the top. The waiters say it contains no fish, but cannot describe it further.

The restaurant is Pan-Asian (I can identify a number of Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai dishes on the menu), so no hint there as to the sauce's national origin. My cousin says the sauce is similar to something he has seen in Vietnamese restaurants, but in my experience Vietnamese fish sauce is fishy, strongly flavored, and NOT yellow.

What is this sauce? Thank you all.