Category: Vegan Friendly
Location: Arlington
Overall Rating: 8.5
Mellow Mushroom is part of a pizza themed pizza chain that offers many veggie toppings. It has Daiya vegan cheese, tofu and tempeh for pizza and sandwiches. They have many locations across the DFW. There is one in Fort Worth, Arlington, Mansfield, Flower Mound, Frisco, Mckenny, Rockwall, Denton and Southlake. There was a Dallas location but they closed down as of a few months ago. They are all basically the same except for the restaurant style which will fall into 1 of 3 categories (Some have a combination of them). Some have a traditional restaurant setup with a kid like fun theme. Others have a setup more similar to a lounge (Including a bar). The last type of Mellow Mushroom is the setup that includes a roofed outdoor patio that you can request to sit in and has a somewhat sophisticated theme. The menu at all of the is the same. Based on the difference in settings, some may rate higher on the atmosphere for you depending on your taste in environment. It should also be mentioned that some have their vegan items on a completely separate menu. The Mellow we visited is the location in Arlington.
Food: We definitely found the food to be delectable. One thing that we all saw to be a plus is the vegan cheese was on the pizza very well. The overall texture of the pizza in crust, cheese, veggie and meat replacer kept up well. They had a range of flavors for their meat substitutes including BBQ, jerk, pesto, curry and teriyaki. The crust is what is known as crummy in the sense of have that trail of crumbs on it like the pizza you see at dominos. If that’s an issue for you, it should be mentioned here.
Customer Service: We had 2 experiences here. One was the experience with the whole restaurant. The other is with our individual server. The experience with the whole restaurant was very good. They were very cooperative with us making our reservation and despite them being packed at the time of our meetup, we were still seated in our reserved spots within 5 minutes of our arrival. It should be noted that different Mellow Mushrooms have different reservation policies. I’ve personally been to multiple locations including the one in McKinney and Southlake. Southlake’s location said that they don’t do reservations on the weekends and the party can’t be more then 25. If you have a big party, call ahead of time to see that location’s policy. The Arlington location we went to allow reservations all days of the week. Our experience with the server was not as good. He was somewhat unprofessional in the sense that he was kind of stern to be a server. He also forgot to bring one of us our change back. While the 1st hiccup can be overlooked, the last one is unacceptable.
Atmosphere: For this location, it was a hybrid between a fun style place to hang out and a lounge like setting. They played music in the background that set a night out on the town, hanging out theme. We found it enjoyable. We were also shocked that despite them being packed, the restaurant was VERY clean.
Overall: Food was great. Customer service was good on the restaurant’s end as a whole but poor on the server end. Atmosphere was nice. Not too loud and had enjoyable music in the background. They are definitely a candidate for a second visit. Side note: Some locations have an online service where you can build your own pizza online; selecting the vegan cheese, veggies, size and meat substitute and you can arrange a time to pick your pizza up. This can be very convenient if you have a taste for pizza but don’t have time (Or don’t want to) wait. Check the website of the location you want the pizza from to see if they offer it.
