Mellow Mushroom Richmond - Carytown — Restaurant in Richmond

In exploring Richmond, i saw the Mellow Mushroom via google maps and thought it would be a quaint little hippie shop that would have Bob Marley playing and maybe that one guy with dreds hanging out playing hacky sack with some friends. To my utter shock and slight horror, i found what felt like a upscale middle class restaurant. I almost turned around and left, but it was hot and i was craving a slice of greasy cheesy pizza. The reviews were plentiful and good, so... if they had pizza by the slice i would try it, if not, i would go hungry a little longer. The employees were focused, busy, fully engaged and very kind. A personal cell phone was going off by one of the order screens, but was ignored, which is a great sign! I was really put off by how corporate it felt, but i placed my order and waited. The coolest thing there were the infinity mirrors. Other than that i was almost feeling deceived by the name. Tricked by corporate America 😂 Eventually my 2 slices of cheese pizza came out and i took my box to enjoy in the germs of my own self in my car! I didn’t know what to expect, but when i opened the box and saw these 2 beautiful thin cheesy slices of pizza staring at me like i had just received them off the boardwalk, my excitement began to grow. I picked it up and needed 2 hands bc it was perfectly droopy and slightly crisp with shimmering grease off the perfect amount of cheese! And the first bite.... YES!!!! This is what I’ve been searching for the past few weeks!! It would be worth an hour and a half hike for 2 more slices! I will...

Man it sucks to give a bad review because every other time we dine here we have a pretty decent experience except today. We came here in hopes to have our weekly date night. At first everything seemed to be going good until we ordered. After we ordered our food we didn’t see our server again for 30 minutes or so. I understand servers get caught up or get busy sometimes. That’s no excuse though for her not checking on us after we got our food and that’s no excuse for every other employee who walked by us for that time and said nothing. I eventually got up about 10-15 minutes after having food but haven’t been checked on. I needed mayo for my sub and he needed parmesan and a refill for some time now. I also needed hot sauce but didn’t tell them because I was already inconveniencing another employee. I found an employee who was willing to help me and she brought us over the items and informed us that our server was also serving a 20 top and couldn’t get to us. If that’s the case, she shouldn’t of been serving us in the first place. She couldn’t handle it and because of that we ate cold food. Our server finally came back and I expressed I was sad for eating cold food and the manager took five dollars off and gave us a box for the rest of our cold food. We left pretty upset honestly. The server still got over a 10% tip but I don’t think this will be a spot for our date...

UPDATE: something has happened to this mellow over the last few months and it went from being 5 stars to MAYBE 1.... im not sure if it’s a communication issue or a management issue, but this poor restaurant has done a complete 180 from the last time i was in there. I overheard, what i assume is a manager, call a table the N word under his breath and in the same visit cursed at a hostess in front of myself and my family for wearing a shirt that everyone else seemed to be wearing as well. The employees aren’t happy and it shows in the service. I used to love this location, but I think I’ll go to the other two locations in Richmond from now on. I can’t deal with racist managers who treat their employees like garbage. (it’s some guy with dark brown hair, was in a polo shirt & a short beard) I called and spoke with someone at the restaurant about the behavior of this manager, but I’m not sure if anything will be done. I was debating contacting NBC12 and BBB since this is the same establishment that is intolerant of homeless people (look on the news from a few years ago)

Ive been to this location a LOT before and I’m disappointed to know how it’s changed in just a short amount of time.

I DO hope the one gentleman with the very well groomed beard is still there to help balance out the bad energy from the poor attitudes that surround the...