Mellow Mushroom

No one unaware this restaurant is part of a Mellow Mushroom chain would ever believe it anything but another local Oak Street eatery, a place peculiar to the wonderful food culture unique to New Orleans. The manager will come out now and again to check on things, even offering an occasional «free wine-​tasting» when something new comes in. Of course the pretzel appetizers are every bit as good as anyone could wish. But we’ve eaten a range of things off the menu, salads, hamburgers, pizza (the gluten-​free mushroom pizza is a delicious blend of topping, and crispy crust) and have been dissatisfied only with the side of potatoes (not at all up to par with the rest). Great place for sitting back with friends, with or without a drink, at the end of a day. (Service, while always friendly, is generally New Orleans-​slow. But friendly. Friendly is important, too!)

Skip this review if you can eat real pizza. Gluten-​free (GF) pizza is a bit of an oxymoron. I get it.
Pizza is made up of three components, namely, toppings, sauce and crust. I kept the toppings simple, but the red sauce was bland and the GF crust was cardboardy and charred. That’s just one out of three. To keep this short, stars for even having the option, but not a food item I’d actively seek out. If dining with friends, best to order the cheapest thing on the menu and splurge elsewhere.

Let me begin by stating that I believe this is a place that specializes in pizza. However, my wife have concluded Giordano’s Pizza in Chicago is the very best. So with that begin said we tried the Hoagies. My wife had the Steak & Cheese Hoagie (Natural grilled steak, onions, mushrooms, green peppers, provolone, mayo, lettuce and roma tomatoes) Half $ 7 Full $ 10 with a bag of chips. Excellent, tasty on a french bread. This was the perfect combinations of ingredients I would recommend requesting a little extra mayo on the side.
I had the Jerk Chicken Hoagie. Let’s pause for a second while I think about how great this sandwich was. To begin my wife and I both had full sandwiches so we swapped half of the sandwiches. The Jerk chicken has onions, mushrooms, green peppers, pineapples, grilled together topped off with pesto mayo, roma tomatoes, spinach and feta cheese. Soul satisfying nothing missing, it was just the right amount of spiciness.
The waitress Stephanie was very friendly, prompt and courteous.
Downstairs has 3 flat screen televisions, upstairs has a large bar with 10 TV’s. The bar upstairs could accommodate a wedding party a corporate event, or a Xavier University vs. Dillard/​Tulane Univeristy Student Triva Quiz event (I hope management reads this post and puts something together for the students). Washrooms are spacious and very clean. Parking along the street is free after 6pm.
Lastly, the establishment is military friendly*.

Corporate atmosphere, corporate generic food with typical creative selling points that just don’t hold up. For instance, beer cheese… just Meh.
And,
Way way over priced. Would probably be better as a group outing. But I paid $ 37 for a 10″ pep and 12″ gluten free special pizza. Pep was good. Gluten free crust was sad and flat and burnt and plain nasty. They should lose it all together. Especially for the outrageous charge!
Find a nice mom and pop pizza place that doesn’t try so hard and you’ll be much more satisfied :)

The pizza is very good, but the service is EXTREMELY SLOW!!! When writing this review I have been waiting over forty minutes just for my appetizer and am still waiting!

The Holy SHITAKE PIZZA… Yummm!!! This place is nice, cool & kooky. We also tried the red potato skin pizza but the holy shitake took first place today! I love the not-​your-​average-​pizzas here and will be back to try every single one. Bonus: Lots of TVs for the man in your life. Some booths even have their own tv.

The Shitake pie is the shhhhh!!! It was so delicious that this carnivore didn’t even miss my meat/​seafood pizza go to. This pizza could make me give up meat… ok well maybe not but darn close. I’m also not a huge fan of onions but the caramelization (sp?) onions give just the perfect sweet to the savory. The service was great and I’m just bummed that I can’t eat this once a week! Kudos MM, you’ve got a fan!

The mellow mushroom is an interesting little place. While being a pizza chain it managed to be quite unique. The place has a lot of local flair and even custom menu choices. Food was pretty good too. They use a real sweet pizza sauce, which I happen to like! The burgers had potatoes on the side, but not your typical fried. Instead they were new potatoes, roasted with onions, good stuff. You also won’t be short on cheese, any cheese based item will have a ton on it. Plan to split, the portions are large!

I’m big on the right tunes for dining out, the Mellow Mushroom on Oak St is often playing rockin jams from Zeppelin to the Dead. Cool funky weird art on the walls, fun trippy vibe. Local beers on tap, Abita, Nola brewing… I’ve enjoyed the pizza and calzones here, but the highlight for me is the beer cheese sauce, it’s so good, cheesy and rich, slightly smoky, it’s the sauce I think about in the middle of the week, man I could go for that sauce with the pretzel appetizers.
Also this past Wednesday at 7pm played trivia there for the first time, fun host and good time, nice range for questions, from a difficulty standpoint. The team with the funniest name is also awarded a pitcher of free beer by the host just before the first round.

We planned a surprise party for my best friend here and it could not have gone better! I contacted the GM Joe about hosting an event and from the start, he was so helpful in giving me all the information we needed to make the night a success. We got there and our bartender and waitress (can’t remember their names, sorry!) were very accommodating and knowledgeable about the food and drinks.
The atmosphere is very cool! The upstairs area (where our group was all night) is decorated with esoteric paintings and there are 2 patios, one for smoking and one that overlooks the street. The drinks were great, reasonably priced, and there is usually a special running on the reg. And the food is awesome! You gotta try that muffaletta bread. The service was fast and the food was on point.
Whether you are just looking to grab dinner at a cool pizza joint or wanna host an event, I definitely recommend this place!

Food was so good. Spinach salad, calzone and pizza can not go wrong. Found using Unilocal and no complaints. Block and half off St. Charles streetcar. Will be back on next trip to nola.

This was a fine place for pizza. At the time of visit the place was deserted, however, which left the atmosphere a bit lacking. I liked my time there and the pizza was very good, but I’m not in any rush to return.

I ordered a shiitake mushroom pizza to-​go and was not disappointed. It was soooo delicious! Hands-​down my favorite pizza place ever.
The staff are all very nice and friendly, when they mixed up my order, I was offered a beer on tap! Great customer service. Great atmosphere.
I also must mention that good bread makes great pizzas, and MM has the best crust.

What a funky little place! I’m a New Yorker and although this isn’t New York pizza, it was pretty good! The crust was golden crispy and buttery. We got two specialty pies and they were loaded with meat. I’m curious about what the plain cheese pizza is like. We also got cheese bread which was just eh and I thought the dipping sauce was too sweet and bland. I would definitely come try more pizza here.

I looooove Mellow Mushroom. Eating here on my birthday is becoming a tradition. I ate there for the first time last year, and again on my birthday, just a few days ago. I love the atmosphere. Open, bright, clean and kitschy. The artwork is one of my favorite aspects as well as the mason jar lighting over the bar. Upstairs they host trivia and other fun weekly events and you will have to discover it in case you need to use the bathroom. Essentially, «Nature Calling» takes you on a tour of the second floor, which includes even more AMAZING artwork.
Appetizers, you must order the handmade pretzels. On my first visit we had to wait a while to get our order, but that’s because 1. They’re handmade, and 2. they ran out, 3. So we had to wait for them to bake!
If you’re debating between garlic and parmesan or butter and salt EITHER choice is divine. Don’t even think about not ordering the Turbodog Beer Cheese Dipping Sauce because I could drink that sauce. Delicious.
I always order pizza when I come, I can’t help it. No salad or Calzone for me, give me a 10″ personal pizza and a specialty cocktail and I’ll be a happy camper. I ordered the Holy Shitaake! this time, but I «threw bacon» at a normally vegetarian pizza.
Service is always 150%, Food is always The Cat’s Pajamas, and Atmosphere/​Ambience is one of the coolest places on Oak. Oh no, the secret’s out!

So, they didn’t have barbecue chips. How was this resolved? The owner went down the street to rite aid and picked some up. Without being asked. If I wasn’t a tourist, I’d be here everyday.
On the good side, the pizza is great. As a native New Yorker, this is the best pizza I’ve had outside of the city. Definitely stop here if you’re in New Orleans.

Came here with my SO upon my return from a 10-​day work stint in Mexico.
The spinach dip is delicious! So creamy… And I like that it comes with garlic bread.
We split that and a Mighty Meaty pizza. The pizza had a ton of meat (awesome) and the crust was amaze-​balls. I also got the waitress to bring some red sauce for dipping, so that’s a big plus.
The waitress was sweet enough, but seemed to forget things.
The dip and a medium pizza was more than enough to fill us up and provide lunch for me today!

So I finally made it to the uptown location of this chain pizza joint… mostly because they mailed me a $ 10 off coupon and it was about to expire.
The service was sort of ridiculous. The staff seemed to be trying but they were just completely off their game. We had to ask for water refills (after rejecting my 1^st 2 drinks… one because I was given an Arnold Palmer instead of an iced tea and then the iced tea because it tasted like a mix rather than brewed) and plates. They were slammed and apologized for the mis-​steps.
The salads we had were yummy and the garlic knots with beer cheese were tasty. The pizza was more just meh. We had the Kosmic Karma and I was not a big fan of their pesto.
We were seated downstairs because trivia was happening upstairs (and seemed to be really popular). The downstairs is pretty loud and it was crowded on this random Wednesday night.
Our floor show was watching people be confused by the 3 different doors that this space has… although only one is in use.

It’s a cool designed family restaurant with good hours and a chill atmosphere. Being a family restaurant though, expect noise and children. This was the case when we got there which is a major downfall when it’s late out and you just want a quiet dinner.
We had the veggie pizza and meatball hoagie to eat. The pizza was nice but probably would’ve been better if it came with one or two less ingredients on top, seemed like overkill. The hoagie was great though! A tad burnt in the outside, but delicious in the inside.
Also treated ourselves to two drinks, the Mushrom Mel was nicer than the Shroom Tea having both light and dark rum mixed with juice and soda water. Recommended over the other.
Overall, a great restaurant but beware as it is likely to get VERY noisy.

The meatball hoagie so far is the best dish in the menu. The mega veggie pizza is not great mainly because it is several different veggies and tofu out together and that’s exactly how it tastes, nothing special and too many different flavors.
The specialty drinks are good. I would recommend the shroom tea. It’s a fruity drink that will give you a decent buzz. I like it because it’s taste is unexpected, surprisingly better than it’s description.
Major warning though. It is a family restaurant. So don’t be surprised to see many kids running around being kids.