My coworker and I decided to try something new for lunch today and we ended up here.
Since I've been to the other Mellow Mushroom on Selwyn, this one had to live up to the expectations from that one.
The atmosphere was interesting. There's a big mushroom light with booths underneath. That's where we were seated. There are mushroom characters around the restaurant. The walls are bright and contrast nicely with the lighting. The bar layout is interesting - circular with the alcohol on circular shelves in the middle.
There is a 2nd floor to this restaurant with a few more tables. The restaurant is much larger than the Selwyn location and has a large outdoor patio.
Food-wise, the menu is the same as the other location. You have pizza, sandwiches, calzones and a few other options. The best thing here is the pizza. The dough is out of this world and sort of like a pretzel dough. It doesn't just lay in your stomach after your meal either which is a nice thing.
Now for specifics...I ordered a custom pizza with jerk chicken, roma tomatoes, black olives, red sauce and mozzarella. The jerk chicken overwhelmed the pizza. It was covered in with it which I guess was to cover up the fact that there is apparently a shortage of roma tomatoes (4 slices) and black olives (I only saw one slice).
Service was good even though we caught them at the tail end of the lunch shift and our original server got called to other duties and another server filled in for a while.
I find this restaurant to be kind of sterile. The mood that I'm used to with Mellow Mushrooms just isn't there. But then again, this is Ballantyne. You'd expect you could still find a little bit of funk in Ballantyne...