Mellow Mushroom

Came to this location for the first time on Valentine’s Day! I really like this big spacious location. There is a private lot for parking in the back. We were seated quickly and our waiter was very friendly and attentive. We ordered beers, the pretzel appetizer, a veggie burger, and calzone, all delicious as usual! I really like that this location has a cute VW bus that also serves as a table! Overall would return, Mellow Mushroom, as always, has a fun vibe, great eats, and great service.

I love the Mellow Mushroom chain. We came in after a game and it wasn’t crowded, the service and pizza was excellent. Everyone in my group really liked their meals. Always a good time and food!

From my family there while visiting UNC & Duke with my daughter. Food was very good. Much better than I had expected. Staff was friendly and waiter was great. Very attentive and liked to chat but not bothersome at all. I would definitely recommend stopping here while visiting Chapel Hill.

I love me some Mellow Mushroom. This location is my favorite I’ve tried so far. The bar area is full of Windows and is nice and bright. When you walk into the restaurant there’s a groovy VW that you can eat inside of. They have quite a few beers on tap, and have amazing pizza! Bayou Bleu and Philosophers Pie are my favorites.

WOW! Talk about hospitality– my party of 9 walked in and was greeted and sat instantly! Whole staff seemed to be in a great mood which set the vibe for a pleasant experience. Our server did an outstanding job of recommending some unique and delicious topping combinations for our pizzas (half of us being vegan), and we’re so happy she did! Everything came out amazing. Eventually got to meet the manager, Hannah and could easily tell she is a great leader and fun to work for! Thanks for making it an awesome experience– planning to stop in next time we’re in town!

Probably one of my very favorite locations for Mellow Mushroom. I was extremely impressed with our server, Kristine. While they don’t sell strawberry lemonade, she offered to mix my husband a grenadine lemonade that he ended up loving. Food was great at this location and service was fantastic.

Great pizza, apps, beer selection, and friendly staff. Hosts Phyllis and Zane (not sure I spelled that correctly) are great and especially good with children. Come here, sit outside, have some drinks, and watch UNC pass by.

Good pizza! The waitstaff are very very unfriendly. It’s almost odd that every person working there was seems unhappy to be there. The person to seat us ignored us standing in front of him for a good while, not even a «hello, I’ll be right with you», then the waitress did not greet us with a smile or any bit of friendliness. As we waited (we waited a very long time) we noticed that none of the wait staff ever smiled or looked happy. Very odd atmosphere but the pizza was good!

We love the Mellow Mushroom. Should have known when we walked in at lunch and there was NO One there that was a sign!!! I had to go chase down our waiter who was also the bartender to bring us our drinks. That’s also after waiting 10 minutes for a server. Again, there were 3 other tables in the entire restaurant. So no one was in the weeds! Will not be going back!!!

The pizza was good and you can’t go wrong with a red oak pitcher.

Ordered the House Special… good but not up the standards of other MM restrauants I’ve been to. Toppings seemed a bit sparce, dough was very slightly undercooked and lacked something. Overall good but not the outstanding I expected. Local beers just aren’t cutting it, at least not for me.

Due to dietary restrictions my wife and I had Build Your Own Salad the two times we have been there.
Ingredients were fresh and well prepared and we enjoyed our meals with the deliscious house dressing.

My first visit to Mellow Mushroom was over this past weekend for a friend’s birthday gathering. It was a very nice experience!
Avery (our host) was very friendly and funny! We got to sit in the big hippie-​van seating area which just made me the happiest person on earth. There were nine of us, and our waitress made sure that we were set throughout the night. The food here was amazing! I had the White Rabbit small pizza which is just a little bit too big for one person, but yay leftovers!, and it was absolutely delicious.
I didn’t try any of their drinks, but my friend had a mojito and said that it was one of the best mojitos he’s ever had!
I absolutely loved the décor of this place and would recommend it to everyone who appreciates art, good food and friendly people!

As someone who is allergic to both dairy and soy, I was so glad to find a pizza place that offers Daiya vegan cheese! I split a large white rabbit with my mom, and we subbed the dairy cheese for Daiya on half for me. We both loved it! Delicious, crispy crust.

We were a group of three. The service was a little slow but the food was just delicious. Loved the chicken wings, hummus and pita, bruschetta. I am a huge fan of their garlic bread. Its one of my favorite places now. I loved the food and have been there a couple of times already.
It is very fairly priced. Even though the service is slow, but the staff is very sweet.
And the ambience is very good. They have personalized it very well. You can have fun as a sophisticated adult or even like a kid. They have tables were large group of people can also be seated.
Overall, I love the place and would definitely recommend it.
Chicken Wings (Y)

This is one of our favorite pizza places. The pizza is really delicious, and even one single slice is a large serving. You will not leave this place feeling hungry. We have also tried the salads, which are just as good as the pizza options. The atmosphere of the restaurant is really cool and quirky, and has a bit of a nostalgic vibe to it. They even have a VW bus table where groups can be seated. Great fun for everyone. If you are looking for great pizza, and a fun atmosphere to enjoy it in, this is the place. They also offer take out options.

A friend wanted to go here, so I brought a jacket. Luckily we got seated outside, but even being outside we were still berated by the loud music. And since my last post, I did actually read an article saying music is cranked up so people eat faster and more customers come in. I think there are better ways to not have customers linger than blasting their ear drums.
Anyway, I was very ready to drop this review to 2 stars because of how loud the music was. You just couldn’t talk to the person next to you without yelling. BUT, our server was so great that I can’t bring myself to drop the review. Our order was actually messed up, but once we brought the error to their attention they were very helpful. They offered us the wrong pizza while we waited for the right pizza to be cooked, and gave us the extra pizza for free. Mistakes are bound to happen in any enterprise, and what matters is how people respond to them, and the staff really impressed me!
I do wish they would abolish tipping though, just read this paragraph:
Studies have shown that tipping is not an effective incentive for performance in servers. It also creates an environment in which people of color, young people, old people, women, and foreigners tend to get worse service than white males. In a tip-​based system, nonwhite servers make less than their white peers for equal work. Consider also the power imbalance between tippers, who are typically male, and servers, 70 percent of whom are female, and consider that the restaurant industry generates five times the average number of sexual harassment claims per worker. And that in many instances employers have allegedly misused tip credits, which let owners pay servers less than minimum wage if tipping makes up the difference.
Citations for those claims can be found here:

Trying to keep my cursor over the four stars, but with the death of my beloved Pepper’s (RIP), I can’t help but bump the MM up to five because of the tiny space it fills in the large void in my pizza stomach.
First: this place just recently opened, and where are the local parents gonna take their toe-​headed kids? To the Mellow Mushroom for pizza, of course! When I arrived, families were spilling into the street, quite literally, milling about, both waiting to be seated and talking after a big pizza meal.
There is plenty of seating here, so you won’t wait long.
When you get in, you are met by a big old-​timey VW van or something. It’s hollowed out for a big table for people to sit at. I want my next birthday party there, and I’m not being ironic or joking.
To save time, my company and I sat at the bar and ate. The beer list is extensive, because you know MM is one chain that does everything right. I got a Bell’s Two-​Hearted Ale because it is delicious. And then I got a second for the same reason, plus others that probably bend toward the pleasantness of initial inebriation.
We ordered two pies, one pepperoni and onions (my go-​to), and the something pesto-​y-​with jalapenos-​and-​mushrooms, which was good. The crust here, as you may know is very doughy, almost to the point that at some places unbaked, but this seems to be their signature style, and it works. I nearly cleaned a medium pie by myself. The service was okay, after all, it was at the bar, and those guys are serving food and drink.
Eventually the family crowd petered out, and more young adults and older couples came in. There are plenty of screens here to watch the games, and even outdoor areas.
I am SO sad Pepper’s is gone. Franklin will not be the same, and MM can never fill it’s shoes. but MM does a lot of things right, and it’s only fitting that a place like MM step up to the plate, what with it’s corporate power and all.

Pizza!
Mellow Mushroom has taken over the area previously housing Ham’s, and has done an incredibly good job re-​imagining the space they have at hand. For those of you who are too young or too «not at UNC in 2009» to remember Ham’s, they had beer towers, dollar wells, cheap hamburgers, and looked like a college bar.
Mellow Mushroom does not look like a college bar. On the contrary, it looks like a cool family pizza place with the ability to have evening grub and drinks. This is a nice touch in an area of Franklin Street where good, medium-​priced restaurants are always good to have.
The outside has been redeveloped from its Ham’s days, with a cool porch-​like area. The inside is friendly, giving off a 1960s hippie vibe complete with a VW right next to the front of house, and a full bar with lots of beers on tap on the right side. There is also a cool UNC mushroom basketball man, ready to take the free throws that UNC hasn’t been very good at lately.
I ended up getting the Funky Q. Chicken. I’m not sure what the Q stands for («Quality»? «Quick»? «Qi”(a word, according to Words with Friends)?). It’s a pretty good pizza: a perfect combination of chicken, bacon, cheese, and onions. You can also make your own mini pizza, which my dining companion Kevin (an expert in both pizza AND campaigns) went with.
Service is a little slow but incredibly friendly. The slowness may just be from the lunch rush + being open for so little time.
Overall, if you need a place to grab dinner some evening, and want pizza, this is a good place to go to get aforementioned pizza. Also to see a giant mushroom man look like he’s going to shoot a basketball into a basket.

For those who went to UNC in the late ‘90s and the early ‘00s the Mellow Mushroom, formerly located on Franklin Street and Estes Drive, served their unique type of pizza with that groovy vibe that the chain has since become so renown for. Ever since the Mellow Mushroom closed their Chapel Hill location in 2005, Tar Heels have not been able to get their Mellow Mushroom pizza fix in the near vicinity. This is, until today’s grand opening.
If one wanted to get Mellow Mushroom one would have to go to one of their other locations in the RTP in either Durham, Cary, or Raleigh, which is alright sometimes but not when one wants to get a quick pizza bite. That’s all changed now with the new location opening in downtown Chapel Hill in the old Ham’s location across the street from the Franklin Hotel. This location has been a long-​term project due to the renovation of the building, construction of an additional space in the courtyard complete with garage style doors that open from floor to ceiling.
Note:
Do not park in the adjacent parking lot, as it seems to exclusively belong to Cholanad. If you do, you will be towed and have to pay a $ 180.00 fee to get your car back. There is a narrow Mellow Mushroom parking lot in the rear of the building, accessible on Rosemary St.
Décor:
The work they did on this place is very contemporary, but this wouldn’t be the Mellow Mushroom without some vintage and psychedelic funky feeling thrown in the mix. The décor features psychedelic-​inspired art along with a statue of mushroom mascot playing basketball (with MJ’s jersey) and the iconic hippy vehicle, the Volkswagen Bus Vanagon turned into booth seating. There TV’s for sports fans and it also features the largest mural of any Mellow Mushroom location (take that Duke and State!)
Food :
Along with the classic standbys of cheese and pepperonis pizzas there are many choices if you want to try something new, as well as getting a custom one made especially for you. They will tailor it to your specific needs and make it vegan, gluten-​free and remove any other allergens that you might want to avoid. My friends and I ordered a Funky Q based chicken pizza pie for lunch and cinnamon pretzels with honey for dessert. The crust could be a little crispier.
If for some reason you are not feeling pizza you can check their other offerings such as:
*Calzones
*Salads
*Hoagies
*Munchies — Soups, wings, hummus, garlic bread, etc.
*Kid-​approved menu too — perfect for families.
There are local craft beers and wine for the grown-​up crowd. :P
Service:
The service was on the neurotic side and lacking organization, after placing our order another waitress came almost immediately short after asking to place an order. I chalk that to just being open today and hopefully it gets better.
Food for Thought:
Although the pizza and service is good; it is not that really all that different from other competitors. What’s distinct is how cleverly they have created a brand for themselves starting with the Rastafarian-​esque mushroom mascot, their naming schemes, and «hippy dippy» vibe that harkens back to the late 1960s and early 1970s packaged for today’s Millennials’ sensibilities. This place is more about the experience rather than the food, because if you were to eat this pizza in any other pizzeria on Franklin Street without the catchy names it is likely that most people would not be so excited about it. This location is nice, but they have a few kinks to work out, hence my 3 star rating.