By Jeanne Yacoubou, MS

In 2014, The VRG published an article on vegan menu items at the restaurant chain Mellow Mushroom. At that time, they offered a pita bread with hummus. We were informed that the pita bread contained L-cysteine, a dough conditioner typically derived from human hair or duck feathers although a microbially-derived form is commercially available but more costly.

We wanted to know whether Mellow Mushroom still served this pita bread. In March 2025, Katie Anderson, the Supply Chain Manager at Mellow Mushroom, told us by phone that they no longer have pita bread on their menu. Further, according to Anderson, L-cysteine is not an ingredient in their pizza doughs.

When we asked whether L-cysteine is in any menu component, such as the buns and rolls, she wrote in a followup email:

“We are not required to disclose [this] information [on our website] …” However, Anderson stated that she will request “a full analysis” from their third-party nutrition company and share the results with The VRG at a later time.

Vegan Menu at Mellow Mushroom

During a follow-up phone call with Anderson in September 2025, The VRG learned details—stated in parentheses below—about this chain’s vegan menu options listed on a dedicated page on Mellow’s website. These items are noted by a vegan icon on the website menu only. Anderson added by email that “…[in-store] printed menus have a lacto-ovo vegetarian icon next to those select items.”

• Vegan Avocado Hoagie (sugar present)
• Vegan Cheese Pizza (mozzarella available)
• Enlightened Spinach Salad (ordered without the dressing and sugar-glazed pecans; select the balsamic vinaigrette or olive oil and vinegar)
• Vegan Greek Salad (ordered without the dressing; select the balsamic vinaigrette or olive oil and vinegar)
• Vegan Tempeh Hoagie (sugar present)
• Vegan Veg Out Pizza (mozzarella available)
• Vegan Build Your Own Pizza (mozzarella available)

Vegan guests at Mellow Mushroom should remind staff upon ordering a vegan pizza that garlic butter and Parmesan cheese NOT be brushed on the dough although the standard kitchen protocol is to leave them off vegan pizzas.

The VRG asked Anderson if guests could request vegan mozzarella in place of dairy mozzarella on all dishes when dining at Mellow Mushroom. She cautioned in her email response:

“Regarding swapping our regular mozzarella with the vegan mozzarella, this shouldn’t be an issue to request depending on the location/operator. HOWEVER, it is important to note that simply substituting the mozzarella doesn’t automatically make it a ‘vegan option.’ Only the items identified as vegan by our third party nutrition company (as I shared with you over the phone) are vegan.”

The menu options in the bulleted list above are vegan.

Readers should note that Anderson was unable to verify at this time whether the sugar present in the menu items listed above—including the pizza sauce, pizza dough, and hoagie rolls – had been processed through cow bone char, a method used to whiten some non-USDA certified organic cane sugar. (Incidentally, beet sugar is never processed through bone char.) However, Anderson informed The VRG that she “…will work on reviewing and obtaining the answers from our supplier, ingredient deck. or from our third-party nutrition company” and relay this information to us.

The vegan page on the Mellow website also lists pretzels. We don’t include them here because “…pretzels are being phased out and we will only have the pretzel bites as a menu option…the pretzels/pretzel bites are made with the same dough used to make pizzas.”

Nutrition Portal on Mellow Mushroom Website

The Mellow Mushroom website contains a nutrition page with three functions:

• Nutrition calculator
• Interactive nutrition menu
• Allergen menu

Unfortunately, although interested guests could determine some information about the menu offerings, none of these pages provides complete ingredient information about them.

However, we also discovered some things by using the nutrition calculator that was not evident on the menu page itself. For instance, a patron could order tempeh on a pizza.

Oddly, according to the calculator, it is also possible to add “vegan feta cheese” to a pizza, but NOT to a Greek or spinach salad.

So, we asked Anderson if a guest wanted vegan feta and/or mozzarella cheese on either salad, could they order it? She replied:

“…The vegan feta crumbles were part of a limited time offer and should have been removed from the website. Thank you for catching this. I do not see an issue with adding the vegan mozzarella to a salad upon request, but it is up to the location.”

Anderson informed us that when the feta crumbles were offered, they were the Follow Your Heart brand.

Follow Your Heart Vegan Cheese at Mellow Mushroom

Anderson told The VRG in September 2025 that they had been using vegan mozzarella and feta cheeses from Follow Your Heart (FYH) for the past eight years. According to the FYH website, the ingredients for their dairy-free mozzarella are:

“Filtered Water, Organic Coconut Oil, Potato and Corn Starch, Expeller-Pressed Canola Oil, Sea Salt, Less than 2% of: Natural Flavors, Potato Protein, Calcium Phosphate, Organic Vegan Cane Sugar, Organic Vegetable Glycerin, Cellulose, Sodium Citrate, Citric Acid, Lactic Acid, Sodium Bicarbonate, Beta Carotene for Color.”

Readers may notice that USDA Organic cane sugar—which is never filtered via cow bone char—is used in the FYH cheese.

Anderson also informed The VRG by email in August 2025 that they “finalized our new grated Parmesan cheese, and I’m happy to pass along it is animal-rennet free.” In a follow-up email, she specified that the Parmesan cheese is cow’s milk-based.

Thank you to Mellow Mushroom for all their assistance to consumers.

The contents of this posting, our website and our other publications, including Vegan Journal, are not intended to provide personal medical advice. Medical advice should be obtained from a qualified health professional. We often depend on product and ingredient information from company statements. It is impossible to be 100% sure about a statement, info can change, people have different views, and mistakes can be made. Please use your best judgment about whether a product is suitable for you. To be sure, do further research or confirmation on your own.

For information on other chains, see https://www.vrg.org/fastfoodinfo.php

For information on veg restaurants, see https://www.vrg.org/restaurant/index.php