Mellow Mushroom Chattanooga — Restaurant in Chattanooga

It was horrible. I LOVE Mellow Mushroom. I am a veteran and have been to dozens of Mellow Mushrooms in just as many states. They have always been great. Until now. This restaurant is located right across the street from the Chattanooga aquarium so it appears to always be packed. We didn't mind the wait, because Mellow Mushroom is good food. Usually. We were seated after 45 minute wait on a Sunday night. Wow! Tood another 20 minutes to get our 2 sodas and a child's milk. Ordered a half pretzel, a small cheese pizza and a steak calzone with no mushrooms or peppers. Another 30 minutes and 3 sort of pretzels showed up. The server put them in the table and said, do you want these? I can comp your bill or make more. What?! We looked and they were horrible. Why would you serve that? We said no thanks to them and asked for the comp. Next, after 15 more minutes,the small cheese pizza showed up. It was bad too. There was cheese and sauce on less than half the pizza. Last the Calzone showed up, about 15 more minutes. Yep, full of mushrooms. The server... "But I told them no mushrooms or peppers." She took it back and comped it. We ended up sharing a poorly made small cheese pizza. For two sodas, one childstmilk and a sickly small cheese pizza it was $25. You would think they would have just not charged us. Upon returning to our hotel I asked the staff about it. I was told by 4 people that live and work there that this Mellow Mushroom is horrible. People complain about it all the time, but because it is located right at the aquarium it is always packed so the...

Ordered the Pacific Rim today. Crust was absolutely terrible and the ingredients were not fresh. Had the entire pizza sent back. Will never come to this location again. I eat at different Mellow Mushroom locations and pizza has always been great. Really disappointed with the food quality.

What made the experience even worse was that the location was chronically understaffed. Waited 20 minutes to get seated because the hostess was bussing tables and greeting customers in between as the line of customers backed up out the front door. It took 70 minutes to cook the pizza only to send it back, an abysmal failure in taste and quality. The cardboard taste of Dominoes pizza tastes better than the crap that was served to me. No effort by this location to make me whole with the long wait and terrible food, still charged me for everything else. An absolutely terrible experience and poorly managed location.

Our server was wonderful, but was chronically overworked and overwhelmed trying to serve more customers than she can handle.

My daughter loved her pretzel dough...

That was an incredibly disappointing experience. The restaurant was practically empty, and I quickly understood why. It took the host nearly four minutes to decide where to seat us in an almost empty dining room. After placing our order, I let the server know about my pineapple allergy to avoid cross contamination. She went back to the kitchen and returned to say that only one item on the entire menu was safe, the gluten free version of the meat pizza we had chosen.

Her explanation made no sense. She told us they use their hands to top all pizzas, which left me questioning their food safety practices. If cross contamination is an issue, how is gluten free versus regular, with the exact same toppings, considered safe. To make matters worse, when someone discloses a food allergy, the correct response is not, “How bad is your allergy.” An allergy is an allergy.

I’ve eaten at 3 other mellow mushrooms and this has never been an issue. If you have any type of food allergy, I strongly recommend avoiding...