Golden Mushroom Pizzeria

 

0

5

Jeremy B.

Santa Clara, CA

The environment is nice and casual.

I do not know who was serving those people at the time, but I have been going to this restaurant for the past two years and the service has yet to fail me. They menu is vast ranging from burgers to pastas to their home style pizza.

It is a great family environment run by family. The owner Pete has done an excellent job with the place.

The pizza is priced just right. It is cooked to the point where the crust is nice and crispy and where the toppings melt right into your mouth. You can order your pizza to be well done, where they cook the toppings extra nice for you picky people. I have also noticed they can cook the crust to be softer. All you have to do is ask and they will make it perfect for you.

my favorite pizza there is the Alfredo, with a little garlic, and chicken.

Last two reviews again were the same person.. This is sad.

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Elite '08

313

1041

Kathleen M.

San Jose, CA

Until last night I believed that even bad pizza was still good. And then I ate at Golden Mushroom.

Let me back up a bit to when we ordered. The chick behind the pizza counter moved so slowly that I actually think it took five minutes to order even though there was no one in front of us. After (finally) ordering I moved on from her to the next person with a glassy stare, the beverage guy. We asked him for a beer and four glasses of water. While it took us a minute or two to go back to our friend to find out what kind of beer he wanted, beverage guy made no move on the four waters to fill, preferring instead to stare into space like a zombie. We actually wondered if the staff was, in fact, inbred.

After our order of spag 'n balls and pizza arrived, we sat there for five minutes waiting for silverware, and actually had to remind the silverware guy twice that we needed it. In the meantime, silverware-less, I ate the garlic bread that accompanied the spag 'n balls. I thought it tasted odd, and that the garlic was weird and pasty. Little did I know that I would soon be wishing for more garlic bread, because the odd flavors were nothing compared to the travesty of the rest of the meal.

Before ordering the spag 'n balls, we asked our friend who'd had it before, "How's the $3 spaghetti?" She replied, "It's $3 spaghetti." That should have been our tip-off. The pasta was overcooked, and the pasta wore a mullet of sauce --- cropped thick tomato parts on top and a long slick of juice in the back. The balls were overcooked and certainly didn't improve anything. Imagine what you'd get if you ordered spaghetti from Carrow's. Now imagine someone took a dump on it. (That part was just for fun. It didn't taste like *actual* fecal matter. I'm guessing anyway.)

We also shared a pizza with tomatoes and fresh garlic. Now I'm no genius, but last I checked the pizza crust is supposed to be cooked through. And also when someone requests garlic you don't cover the entire pie in it so that's all you taste. And also, cheese on a pizza is supposed to be mozzarella, not cheddar thrown in with the mozzarella for good measure. It was hard to decide what was better --- the pizza or the spag 'n balls. I liked having the variety so I didn't ruin my taste buds forever too long on each one.

The pizza place itself is curious in that it looks like a bar from the 70s where every surface is covered in wood paneling. There are sports jerseys hanging from the walls, and curiously there were lots of people there hanging out and watching sports on TV. We could only assume they knew the people, er zombies working there. Also, the logo of Golden Mushroom is an elf sitting on a mushroom. Between the name and the logo I can't help but wonder if the drug references explain the inbred zombie no-brain-cells-left servers.

Golden Mushroom Pizzeria in Santa Clara: It's Hard to Decide What's Worse --- the Undercooked Pizza, the Overcooked Pasta, or the Inbred Zombie Servers
202 Saratoga Ave
Santa Clara, CA 95050
(408) 247-9671  
(But why would you be calling? Avoid! Avoid!)

For pictures and a review of 7 out of 10 from Jatbar (which now casts doubt on all Jatbar reviews):
http://www.jatbar.com/...

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7

10

Mark P.

San Jose, CA

In a word: terrible.

We ended up here because our intended destination, a Japanese restaurant down the block, is closed on Sundays.  We tried the $3 Spaghetti and Meatballs Plate and a large pizza with tomatoes and garlic.  I suppose the $3 price tag ought to have been a pretty conspicuous hint that the spaghetti and meatballs wouldn't be very good, but the low price practically made it a must-try for sheer novelty.  Well, it tasted like $3.  And no, I don't mean that it tasted like what you would expect to get for $3-- I mean it tasted like a dozen quarters that had spent the last 24 hours at the bottom of a bum's combination pan-handling jar / piss jug.

Seriously, it was a plate of over-cooked spaghetti covered in a tomato sauce that achieved the seemingly impossible feat of being both watery and pasty.  The plate also came with two pieces of garlic bread that weren't crispy at all-- they tasted like, and had the texture of, a buttered hamburger bun.  To their credit the meatballs were by all appearances actually made of meat, but that did little to salvage this disaster.

As for the pizza, the sight of the real pizza oven gave us momentary hope that it would be alright, but alas it was not so.  The crust was crispy at the very bottom and completely undercooked everywhere else, making it both crispy and unpleasantly doughy.  (Coupled with the watery yet pasty spaghetti sauce, I wonder whether Golden Mushroom specializes in paradoxical foods.)  The cheese was a blend of mozzarella and cheddar, a combination which I personally despise.  (Where'd they steal that idea from?  Round Table?)  And worst of all, the pizza was so overladen with raw garlic as to be virtually inedible.  You know it's a bad pizza when it makes the $3 Spaghetti and Meatballs Plate look appealing.

Bottom line, when faced with the choice between eating at a closed Japanese restaurant or Golden Mushroom, pick the closed Japanese restaurant.  Worst case scenario: you're arrested for breaking and entering and get sent to prison.  That's still better food than you'll find at Golden Mushroom.   Just don't drop the soap...

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0

14

Ron G.

Santa Clara, CA

Boy, Kathleen and Mark's reviews almost sounds like they were written by an ex employee or something. Big deal, employees that barely care, working in a pizza place. There's a big surprise. But, seeing as these two reviews, interestingly, were written the same day, they're most likely the same person, or two people who were together. And try to tell me that last review doesn't have some kind of bizarre bitterness driven edge to it... maybe he got carded.
On the other hand, this place has been here for more than thirty years, under the same ownership, so apparently they're doing something right. Few, if any, competitors as far as pizza goes. I'm relatively stunned that people order $3 spag & meatballs, and complain about it not being like mama makes. Get a clue.

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22

97

Tif W.

Santa Clara, CA

Can I give no stars? Guess not. I would not send my worst enemy to this place. How does this place get business? I have no fuckin' clue. Do people come to cleanse their colons? Are they a bunch of masochists who derive gratification from eating horrible pizza and soggy lasagna, using dirty utensils in hopes of catching something semi-deadly, and being served by high school students who probably couldn't count past 10?

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4

31

Michelle A.

San Jose, CA

I live near Milpitas and will drive all the way over to get this pizza and garlic bread. YUMMY... They have a lot of cheese and even add cheddar cheese on the pizza top.  I like they have the old school pizza cooker where the pizza is cooked in a round oven NOT the pass thru oven. They let the bottom get nice and crisp and can hold all those yummy toppings.  I go there in a heart beat! I believe this is the only thing positive my ex boyfriend did was introduce me to this FAB PLACE.

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Elite '08

187

999

Rachel R.

Santa Clara, CA

This place has the air of a dark bar from the late 70's that has been barely converted to a pizzeria.  Not spectacular, but will certainly do in a pinch.  I've only had the pasta special described on Jatbar (http://www.jatbar.com/...).  My friends did not like the pizza.

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0

10

Greg B.

San Jose, CA

The ambiance isn't much - I always get takeout - but the pizza is really very good. The cleanliness isn't much to write home about - cf. Taco Bravo in Campbell - but the pizza is tasty and not your standard Round Table/Pizza Hut/Domino's processed crap.

I dunno about the spaghetti, but if you went out looking for Japanese food, and ended up eating $3 spaghetti at Golden Mushroom, I can see why you're bitter. On a similar note, I'd be pretty cranky if I left the house expecting some happy pizza and ended up with Benihana or whatever it is that people who like Japanese food eat.

I live pretty close and have been ordering from Golden Mushroom probably at least once a month for 6 years now, and haven't had a pizza from them that sucked. I do wonder if the people who had an awful experience managed to communicate their lack of enthusiasm for the process and got service and food to match. My impression is that it's a family-owned place, where at least 50% of the workers are in the extended family, and I bet they're not too shy about making people feel unwelcome if they've been dissed.

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