Young's Teriyaki

Young's Teriyaki, located on High St. in downtown Salem, Oregon, serves Japanese and Korean dishes.

I showed up a bit past 6 in the evening. No one was at the counter; the woman who I assume was in charge of the cash register was talking to customers outside. Eventually, a man came from the back to take my order. I got the spicy pork plate ($8): pieces of pork cooked in a Korean sauce and topped with sesame seeds, served with brown rice and vegetables.

Possible specials that Young's may run

Spicy Pork plate (Young's Teriyaki)

The pork was not even second-rate in terms of quality and flavor. Perhaps not even third-rate. This meat was something I wouldn't feed to my (non-existent) pet. Excess fat on my serving, not to mention that the pork was already a bit tough to cut (the pork was already in pieces, but I felt the pieces were still too big for me). While one could probably just eat the pork, fat and all, I'd rather have just the meat, thank you very much. I detected no spice at all in this one, although I will admit that my taste buds -- so used to extremely spicy sauces and extracts -- may tend to ignore the trace hints of spice a dish can produce. The sauce had good flavor, and that was honestly the only high point of this experience.

The vegetables, on their own, had zero flavor, so I relied on the leftover sauce from the pork to eat that. With respect to the brown rice, it was OK, but a small portion of the brown rice had some black foreign matter in it. It's bad enough that the food was not the greatest, but to be met with more unappetizing moments...that was just the last straw.

Hopefully, my visit was an anomaly, but I have to call it like I see it. Despite the promising sauce that dressed the pork, this is not a place I would return to. 1.5/10