After a 2½-year absence, Mellow Mushroom returns to Decatur 11 a.m. Dec. 5 with new ownership and a new location at 340 West Ponce de Leon Avenue.
New owner Tom Hart is making his first venture into the restaurant business after 30 years of working in sales and marketing for Siemens.
His Decatur store will highlight some of the pizza chain’s new look and approach. The circa-1970s cartoonish, hippie-themed art gets replaced in part by a punk rock motif along with literary references on the walls to, among others, William Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway and Hunter Thompson.
The 4,000-square-foot restaurant seats 174, not counting a patio that’s roughly 1,000 square feet. Hart, who describes himself as a “home brewer,” will have a bar seating 17 that will feature 32 beers on tap plus a rotating cask ale.
Though not a sports bar per se, the patio has two large-screen televisions and another seven inside.
The old Decatur Mellow Mushroom, once one of the city’s most popular restaurants, closed abruptly in May 2014 after 15 years in the Commerce Square shopping center.
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