Love Love Teriyaki: for when you've had enough of ketchup

You have to get beyond McDonald's sometime. Ready to take the grownup way past the golden arches? Love Love Teriyaki is five or six steps up.

Actually it's delicious. The little Japanese restaurant situated conveniently by the parking lot at Heritage Mall is for your hidden urbane taste...and a slim pocket book.

Customer Amber Shinn who has gone to this restaurant since it opened, calls it, "Quick, healthy with a clean atmosphere."

It serves real food for people that don't want to be sustained on chemicals anymore.  Though surprisingly small at  little over 10 tables Love Love Teriyaki serves up to 150 people a day. And most of them aren't first- timers. Here's why they keep coming back. Wonderful service, wonderful surroundings, great prices...and the food!

With nothing on the menu above $9 this restaurant is affordable even after a day of shopping.

Some customers call the appetizer sampler one of the best deals on the menu. Arranged diagonally on an elegant white plate between two saucers of dip, the differently curled, delicately fried treats are sweet to the eyes.

 Try the Cream Cheese and Crab won tons. When you bite through the pastry into a warm creamy center you'll never want another McDonald's hamburger. I promise.

The restaurant advertises the Love salad on the windows for a reason. It's made with freshly cut lettuce tossed with perfectly smoked terayiki chicken and drenched in a luscious dressing. The dressing was just made in the kitchen three feet from the tables. The crunch of the fresh ground spices are almost still there.

Or as a mere twist on the love salad buy a big Teriyaki Chicken bowl. Cabbage, lettuce, and that namesake teriyaki are tossed with newly cooked brown rice and soaked in a smack-your-lips dressing.

The miso soup will do as something warm to finish off. Most soup from Japanese restaurants taste  canned. Love Love Terayiki's is almost alive.

Now notice this, fresh lettuce, fresh dressing even fresh brown rice. Where else can you buy brown rice?

The waiters are proud to say customer satisfaction is very high. But reviews on userinstincts.com say Love Love Teriyaki has "good food, poor customer relations." Still those are the people that don't come back. On the average regular customers seem satisfied with the restaurant's quality.

And I'll tell you a secret. Waiters will change the chicken on your love salad for a bowl of brown rice...that is if you ask nicely. And you couldn't believe how good it tastes!


The surroundings match the food. A gray, white and black scheme with bamboo floor and long windows have an austere beauty that is very Japanese. Because the restaurant is so small the customers have learned to take care of each other and speak quietly. And instead of the rock and roll that goes down with hamburgers and shakes your nerves for hours afterward the music, 107.1 K Love, fits the serenity (and the name) of Love Love Teriyaki.

Because like I told you, this is really a step or  two beyond McDonald's.

Love Love Teriyaki
Address: by Heritage Mall---2195 14th Ave. SE #102/ Albany
Phone: (541) 926-4142
Rating: Average good (by userinstinct)
Founded: 2008
Manager: Min Young