Like most chain places, Mellow Mushroom’s new west Little Rock outlet, the area’s first, is noisy by design, especially when, as it has been in the early going, crowded.
Unlike most chain places, however, Mellow Mushroom has food we’d not only recommend but return for.
The Atlanta-based pizza-and-craft-beer chain operates with a sort of soft ’60s vibe, with sly and even outright references to the period’s, er, well, drug culture - a touch of psychedelia here and there in the decor, and some rather suggestive dish titles.
The Magic Mushroom Soup, for example, is just the beginning. The list of specialty pizzas includes pies named “Kosmic Karma,” “Magical Mystery Tour” and “Maui Wowie.” A couple of others are merely clever (“Mellowterranean” and “Thai Dye”) and possibly too clever for the place’s own good (e.g., “Holy Shiitake”). Appetizers, of course, are labeled “Munchies.”
The bet, we’d guess, is that Mellow Mushroom is counting on relatively few of its customers being old enough to remember just what Maui Wowie is. That’s certainly true of most of the floor staff, some of whom don’t look like their parents are old enough to remember the ’60s.
Everybody on the floor - wait staff, bus staff and food runners - wears a Mellow Mushroom T-shirt, which come in a variety of mostly pastel colors and designs. But the management is sufficiently low-key that they can personalize their styles - some wear their shirts off their shoulders or cut them into some off-the-cuff shapes (one waitress we saw had turned hers into a sort of bodice).
The restaurant, on the eastern end of a strip center that includes a Kroger Marketplace and a Marshall’s store, has a main dining room, with booth and table seating and sight-and-sound access to the open kitchen. Or there’s the bar area, with stools “at” the bar, some booth and table seating that is “in” the bar and some booth seating that is “outside” the bar. (You can hear the piped soundtrack, mostly cheesy ’60s and ’70s oldies, in the bar. The dining room is too noisy to hear anything except a thumpy beat.)
And as is typical of chain places, if you enter as a party of two, or in particular that oxymoronic “party of one,” the pert and perky hostesses will put enormous pressure on you to sit in the bar, which, in many chain restaurants, can be a ghetto where (in particular) single diners are easy to ignore.
We didn’t have that problem on our first visit, though we reluctantly took the bar booth we were offered because it meant bypassing the table wait. (Thirty minutes, though that’s not bad for a new chain restaurant in this area. And we encountered it at an odd time - for some reason the place really fills up quickly at 2 p.m. on Saturday.) After a very slight delay in figuring out just who was supposed to be serving us, we got waited on and fed fairly quickly. We had no wait trouble getting a dining room booth next time around.
Speaking of the Magic Mushroom Soup ($4.79, bowl only), it was almost magical, with plentiful bits and slices of grilled shiitake, button and portobello mushrooms in a creamy wine and herb broth, blended with Italian Montamore cheese and garnished with fresh chives. Though we initially griped at the lack of a cup option, the portion (served in a trendy bowl with one side arching much higher than the other) was just about right for an appetizer. We got a lot more chives the second time we ordered it, which didn’t help it much, but didn’t hurt.
We raved over Mellow Mushroom’s meatballs, which are made with fairly coarsely ground beef (a plus) and a nice blend of spices (another plus). They’re available, three to a plate, as an appetizer ($6.99), on a red-sauce bed with melted fresh mozzarella and garnished with shaved parmesan and basil, or on a hoagie ($5.99 half, $8.99 whole).
Our Muffuletta Cheese Bread ($5.99), a loaf of French bread topped with a fairly sharp three-olive tapenade, melted mozzarella and parmesan, tasted a lot better than it looked. Other bread-based “munchies” options: garlic bread ($3.29) and cheese bread ($4.29).
Your server is likely to brag about the selection of40-plus beers, which is admirable, and also about Mellow Mushroom’s pizza, which was not hyperbole.
With the exception of the gluten-free option (and the menu is very upfront about what’s gluten-free, right down to the gluten-free hard apple cider on the brew menu), there’s one basic crust, Mellow’s crust, which is bready and crisp at the “wide” end and firm and chewy rather than crispy on the bottom. It’s buttered and pre-parmesan-sprinkled, though, of course, there are glass grated-cheese containers on the tables if you need more. The basic red sauce is rich without being overwhelmingly spiced.
Pizzas come as 10-inch “small,” 14-inch “medium” and 16-inch “large.” There are 15 specialty, one might even say exotic, pies that are chain staples ($12.49-$24.99 depending on ingredients and size).
That includes the Maui Wowie (pesto base with ham, pineapple, jerk chicken, banana peppers, apple-wood smoked bacon and mozzarella); Philosopher’s Pie (olive oil and garlic base with grilled steak, portobello mushrooms, artichoke hearts, kalamata olives and provolone, feta and mozzarella cheeses); Thai Dye (olive oil and garlic base, all-natural grilled curry chicken, mozzarella cheese, Roma tomatoes and onions, topped with fresh basil, cucumbers and a “sweet swirl of Thai chili sauce”); and Bayou Bleu (spicy bleu cheese-base topped with all-natural grilled shrimp and andouille sausage covered in mozzarella and garnished with chives).
There are also three specialty pies that are specific to west Little Rock, including the Caesar! (pesto chicken, provolone, mozzarella and feta and topped with a Caesar salad and Roma tomatoes on an olive oil and garlic base).
Of course, you are always at liberty to create your own, starting with the basic cheese pie: $7.79 small, $11.79 medium, $14.59 large - red sauce and mozzarella with a choice of toppings, ranging from everyday (pepperoni, mushrooms, black olives and the like) to exotic (andouille sausage, Daiya vegan cheese, portobello mushrooms) starting at $1.29 per ordinary item for a 10-inch pie to $2.79 for a specialty item on a 16-incher. Or you can really go to town with “all-natural premium proteins” - grilled chicken, shrimp or steak prepared a la barbecue, buffalo, curry, herb vinaigrette, jerk, pesto or teriyaki) for $3.79-$4.99.
Our pepperoni-Italian sausage-mushroom pie was quite good; our pepperoni-green pepper-fresh basil pizza was “far out.”
Mellow Mushroom maintains a separate entrance for to-go orders, which helps keep the line at the front of the restaurant more manageable. However, the basic 10-inch to-go box doesn’t fit all leftovers - Intrepid Companion had to do a little creative stacking to fit the uneaten slices of a medium pizza in the small box, and while it was perfectly suitable for our Muffuletta Cheese Bread remainders, it was entirely unsuitable for our take-home meatball.
Mellow Mushroom Pizza Bakers
Address: 16103 Chenal Parkway, Little Rock Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday-Wednesday, 11 a.m-11 p.m. Thursday-Saturday Cuisine: Pizza, calzones, salads, sandwiches, “munchies” Credit cards: V, MC, AE, D Alcoholic beverages: Full bar Reservations: Large parties Wheelchair accessible: Yes Carryout: Yes (501) 379-9157
mellowmushroom.com/westlittlerock
Weekend, Pages 33 on 07/04/2013