Ya Mas Greek Taverna & Bar — Restaurant in Salem

Well, I have been to Yamas three times now in the past two years and it just doesn't live up to its hype. I am sure it's a great place fir some. But last Sunday was the third disappointment.

We ordered spinach pie which we had once before. Though it was somewhat oily and greasey from too much butter probably, we were ready to try again.

The waitress came back embarrassingly and told us they had no spinach pie. Well, okay. So we ordered stuffed peppers.

She came back nervously telling us no stuffed peppers. I have been to Amphora in Derry, the Olympia in Lowell, and many other Greek restaurants. This was a first not having spinach pie or stuffed peppers. (Incidentally: Amphora is the best Greek restaurant locally.)

Being a pretty fair Greek cook, I had just made that weekend a pastichio: creamy fluffy bechamel sauce, layers of macaroni and beef...it was prize winning.

So we ordered pistachio and moussaka. The food came out in 5 minutes prompting me to think it was pre-made and popped in an oven or microwave. In a word, it was AWFUL. More like sloppy joes, there was a hard later of melted cheese on top of very oily beef, spoonfuls of oil. The manager or someone came over took one look at it and agreed. A layer of hardened cheese on top of a huge bowl of sloppy joes with a few strands of macaroni at the bottom of the bowl made it pretty unappealing. This was NOT pistachio.

My friend ordered Moussaka, which is supposed to be in layers of eggplant, potato and beef similar to pastichio. There might have been 3 pieces of eggplant and we found one bit of potato. The rest was oily sloppy joes. My friend, disabled, was really now at a loss almost unable to articulate what he wanted to do.

Nicely, we were offered something else. I choose something that could not be messed up: chicken souvlaki. The souvlaki I know is on a stick interspersed with pepper slices and onion. Must have been out of 'em too. It was served with fasoulia, a green bean, onion, tomato mixture. This was not fasoulia. My friend got dolmathes: what was supposed to be a layer of egg lemon sauce was missing. The beef was flavorless missing the Greek flavors of garlic, lemon, etc.

Moreover it took nearly a half hour for the second meal to come out. My friend was much more accommodating than I. A bachelor, he tool the sloppy joes home prompting me to say, 'How can you eat that? It's probably the 80% beef." 80% beef is loaded with ground fat and is the cheapest.

The waitress was so nervous by now that she even forgot the ginger ale which we asked for times. The best part of the meal was the oil and ground kalamata olives.

One time, years ago, at Loretta's in Newburyport, my friend and I got a lousy meal. The owner did not make us pay for the meal and then presented us with a $100 gift card.

Now that's service. Yamas has disappointed me far too many times. I love Greek food. This was not Greek food. In three visits we have dropped easily over $300!

The decorations, the music authentic Greek. Great atmosphere. But not only is the food overpriced,...

This is the first time we have ever tipped service at 15% instead of a 20% minimum. This restaurant is poorly managed and the health standard are very poor!

We had a 7 pm reservation that I booked over a month ago. I called 9 times to let them know we were running 5 minutes late and nobody answered the phone except once where they hung up on me. When we got there, we noticed the phone doesn’t ring at all and they only use the phone to contact guests about their table being ready. Despite the fact that we had a reservation, this was disregarded and we were just added to a list of other people who claimed they had a reservation. We were not seating for about 45 minutes after our reservation and likely only because we said something about the wait. Those that were walk ins were told it was a 45 - 60 minute wait, even though we had waited almost 45 minutes for our scheduled “reservation” If reservations cannot be managed accordingly, this restaurant should only accept walk ins.

It took far too long for us to find out who our server was after already waiting 45 minutes to be seated.There is one bar tender for the entire restaurant, so don’t expect drinks to come too quickly, and a hiring sign is on the front door, so they are definitely understaffed.

The tables are extremely close together and we literally had someone’s butt on our table as he squeezed between the two tables to be seated. When the server demonstrated the tray of desserts, my fiancée was essentially shocked out of the way to make space for the tray. Our chairs both had bent legs, kind of cheap - so don’t be surprised if one of these breaks on you!

The actual greek food on the menu was phenomenal, but they were out of stock for a large selection of their menu. We found this out after attempting to order something off the menu. My fiancée ordered a steak and it was undercooked and cold. There were tongs in the bread basket for the servers to use and the servers were often observed using their hands to grab the bread and place it in the bread bowls (after watching them pick up glasses where people’s mouths had touched). One server was observed to wear her hair down and constantly was touching her hair then grabbed the food and delivered it to a table. Servers were shouting at eachother across the restaurant as well.

We went here for a date night thinking that the Christmas decor made for an upscale vibe; however it was a bunch of mall shoppers and a few other couples who thought the same as us.

The department of public health needs to step in for health and safety practices and the restaurant needs better management for their reservation process and understanding how many tables a single server can manage. This really declined our experience and we REALLY wanted to...

First time going here. First impression was this was a world away from Pelham, NH. It's one of those places you don't expect to see in this area. Very lively atmosphere; almost a bit overstimulating, but not over-the-top loud. Tables were pretty packed in there. If you had to get up to use the bathroom, it was a maze around the floor to get there.

Wait staff was very friendly and attentive. Ordered some wine that wasn't priced per glass on the menu and waiter said would be somewhere from $13-15. Ended up being $16 on the bill. Not like a ripoff or anything, but I don't get why the restaurant wouldn't sacrifice at least a buck to honor the given price for it.

I ordered the roasted lamb dish and my wife ordered the mixed grill dish. Overall, I was more impressed with her dish. The charbroiled meat was delicious and the fries underneath were also fantastic and so unique from any other fries I've had. I expected my dish to be a little more dry. The menu described it as roasted lamb with potato with a some kind of lemon sauce. Well the entire dish was swimming in the sauce. The fact that it was soaked in the sauce wasn't terrible, except that the sauce was overwhelmingly lemony. It overpowered many of the other flavors in the dish. I haven't tried much other Greek food, so maybe my palate is just not refined in this cuisine, but it seemed like the flavor of lemon should have been a little more subtle. I took the rest of my food to go, heated it up in the toaster oven on foil to dry and crisp up with a little added honey, oil, and salt in order to mask the strong lemon. Overall, I'd give my dish a 5/10. I didn't love it, nor hated it. The quality of ingredients seemed great and the lamb was so tender you could easily break it apart with a fork. It just made me feel as though the flavors could have been balanced much better.

I wouldn't throw out the opportunity of coming back here altogether, but I'd definitely have to be in the rare mood to take an expensive risk trying something new. For two people to eat here, plan on spending a minimum of $100 including your tip. All we got were two meals, and one glass of wine. I personally know a couple who came here and between wine, appetizers, meals, and desert, they dropped almost $500. Of course, that's an all-out experience, but just goes to show the range of price you can expect to pay based on what you want out of the place. The price of the place certainly doesn't fit in to general price point of restaurants in Pelham. But I think that's actually a great thing. Even though I didn't personally enjoy my meal, I think Ya Mas has raised the bar on restaurant experiences in Pelham, and I hope more restaurants pop up in this area besides divey little...