Mellow Mushroom

In Warner Robins there is oh so very little to do. I like to think of this town as a socail experiment conducted by aliens Twilight Zone style. If you had an entire town with nothing to do, what would get them excited? A car crash? Roadwork? A new restaurant?

What about a new restaurant that doesn't fit the town at all? Because here in middle Georgia (a military town) the idea of a vegetarian restaurant is laughable at best. To name it Edenz seems like a great idea for suicide. Here, meat is considered a vegetable.

There are new restaurants that pop up all the time and then crash and burn. It's weird. A tiny korean restaurant is holding up very well and the delicious Italian Pie failed. Even restaurants with moderate publicity via the local newspaper most often fail.

But a building started going up recently and it was unveiled tha it was going to be a Mellow Mushroom.

For those not in the know, the Mellow Mushroom is NOT a paraphanlia store but a pizza place that emphasizes nutrition and natural ingredients.

The line is out the door - has been out the door ever since it opened. Business is BOOMING and the parking lot is constantly filled. So filled in fact that the streets behind it (small streets that no one really uses) are lined on BOTH sides with cars.

Apparently the town - the entire town - goes there. Every day.

Well, tomorrow's grocery day so we decided to partake and I called in my order (because when the line is always out the door it is just plain silly to go without calling first. Tsk tsk general population). My order consisted of a plain cheese pizza for my wife who hates toppings of all varieties, and a pizza for me called "Caesar! Caesar!" It is described very well on their on-line menu, but suffice it to say it is not your normal marinara sauce pizza. We also ordered garlic bread.

I went to the restarant, parked a long ways away and got out of the car thinking "Jeez, I'm far away. I'm going to count the number of steps I have to take to get to the front door," just in case anyone's interested. 274 steps from my car door to the front door.

I pushed past the wicked thick crowd waiting to be seated to place their order, wait for their pizza, eat it and leave just in time to turn 90 (seriously people! Why dont' you just call it in and sit outside and eat it in the awesome cafe are and watch the TV being projected above the STAGE) and went up to the counter and there were a ton of people just standing there not doing anything. Customers, I mean, the employees were super busy. Apparently no one in Warner Robins knows how to order a pizza. If you go to the counter and order your pizza and are told "That'll be about forty minutes," do NOT take one step backward and patiently wait. Leave the area! Grab a drink and sit down somewhere. Jeez, people!

So all of these people are just standing around, eyes glazed over like "what do I do, what do I do?"

I push past THEM and say my name, and coincidentally my pizzas were just finished. It still took a while to get the pizza to me. The employee opened them up to show them to me - to see if they meet my high standards - and they did so they bagged everything up for me and rung me up asking if I'd like to buy a calender too.

Sure I do. When I think pizza, I think calender. However, I declined (this time). Then I left and braved the walk back to the car and drove home.

Sitting down with the pizza, I took a slice of Kim's and tried it out.

Delicious. The marinara sauce was delicious and tangy. The crust was edible on its own (unlike most crusts that I call "pizza bones") and the slices are very filling. Then I started to assemble mine because all the vegetables that you shouldn't cook, ie: lettuce and fresh tomatoes mixed with caesar dressing, gets put on by you. It was fun (but messy) and the finished product tasted pretty great. I think Kim's was better and she thought mine was better. I think she just really likes caesar salad.

The garlic bread was pretty great too.

I was so full when I finished and I only ate three pieces! Of a SMALL pizza!

Man, what a tasty dinner.

If you have one in town and haven't gone, you should go. Try it out. It's freaking amazing.