Saturday, August 3, 2013

MY WORST DINING OUT EXPERIENCE - MELLOW MUSHROOM HERNDON


24 hours later and I'm still steaming about this experience so I decided to put it on my blog.
So I'll admit this place has only been open for 10 days ...   clearly it'll take a little time to get into a groove and these guys clearly haven't gotten there (I have some doubts they ever will).   Even with that in mind, this was the worst dining experience I've had in years.   You'll have to judge if the 40 - 60 minute wait to get a table is going to be worth it.

- First be aware that parking is extremely limited.  We saw folks trolling the area for 5 to ten minutes.

- Great beer menu.  Unfortunately nothing on the menu is apparently available,  Seriously.  The first ten (yes 10) selections we made were not available.   I finally walked over to the bar to see what they actually had and then relayed the order to our server.   We literally spent 20 minutes on this part of the meal.

- Waiter was nice and friendly, but totally clueless,   The two 10 year olds with us had better insight into the menu than the waiter.

- It took 40 minutes for the pizzas to actually show up.   People that had come in after us got their orders before we did.   One of the managers noticed something was up and brought over garlic bread as a "peace offering".  We were also told that it was taking them about 30 minutes to cook a pizza.  interestingly at that point in time we'd been waiting 40 minutes,

- The first pizzas showed up (the one the kids ordered).  We were then told that there would be a delay on the second pizza because they'd made a mistake on the order - we ordered it without onions and it showed up with onions.   They re-did the order, but it took another 20 minutes,

- With two young kids with us, we basically gave up at this point asking that the pizzas be put in a box to go.   The manager offered us a 25% discount on the kids pizza which we politely declined.

- Even better, the bill included a beverage we hadn't ordered, but at this point we only had one goal - get out of this place without wasting any more of our time.

- By the way; after all of that, the food was just okay.  One of the 10 year olds told us he'd rather have Papa Johns.  I won't go that far, but it was just okay - not something I would spend two hours waiting for.

Here's the really sad part.  We've been to three other Mellow Mushrooms and each was great.  We were actually excited to hear that one was opening up in Herndon.  Maybe because those prior experiences were so good, this was a complete and thorough disappointment.   The only reason I gave it a star is that's the minimum requirement to upload a review.   My suggestion - maybe wait another six months and try them, or hold out for the one in Savannah, or the one in Charlottesville.

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