There’s not much that’s mellow about the new Mellow Mushroom location at CityPlace. Not the decor, not the ambiance, not the service.

About a half-hour into our wait on a busy week night, as we contemplated the too-bright interiors, the hungry diners cramped into waiting areas and the conflicting advice from staff (“You can wait at the outside bar, if you’d like,” and “You can’t sit here – please wait inside”), my dining companion pegged the place:

Chuck E Cheese for adults.

No wonder I had a headache by the time our buzzer lit up, alerting us our table was ready.

But there’s a remedy for such a headache: good pizza. And once our bites began to arrive, I was reminded that pizza is what Mellow Mushroom does best. It is pizza with a thick, yeasty, garlic-brushed, toasty crust that’s made with spring water. (A gluten-free pizza and drink menu is offered as well.)

Before we get to the pizza, let’s talk about the starter bites: We took our friendly server’s suggestion and ordered the Meatball Trio ($6.49), and were presented with three large grilled meatballs tucked beneath a mess of marinara, melted mozzarella, torn basil and Parmesan shavings. Good thing someone in the kitchen thought to stick the meatballs with toothpicks, otherwise they’d be hard to find – and we may have missed a tender, nicely seasoned bite.

The red sauce was delicious and perfect for dipping the crust of our appetizer bruschetta into. That bruschetta ($6.99) also proved quite tasty. The thin slices of sesame seeded Italian bread are brushed with garlicky oil and toasted, then topped with ripe diced tomatoes, torn basil and feta crumbles and drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar glaze. The bite is savory, sweet, cool and toasty at once.

After all that bread, cheese and sauce, it may seem redundant to dig into a House Special pizza ($13.49 small, $20.49 medium, $25.49 large), but dig in anyway. This is a meat-lover’s pie dotted with sausage, ground beef, ham, pepperoni and Apple-wood smoked bacon, then topped with Roma tomato slices, green pepper and onion slivers, black olives, mushrooms and extra mozzarella. It’s a beast, yes, but one you can conquer with a little help and a beer pairing or two from Mellow’s respectable menu of bottled beers (ales, IPAs, wheat, you name it) and rotating draft brews.

Another meat-lover favorite, the Philosopher’s Pie ($13.49 small, $20.49 medium, $25.49 large), piles grilled steak, earthy portobello mushrooms, artichoke hearts, black olives and three cheeses onto that hefty crust for a nicely varied bite.

For a meatless, albeit richly flavored, pizza, try the Holy Shiitake Pie ($12.49 small, $19.99 medium, $24.99 large), a mingling of shiitake, portobello and button mushrooms, caramelized onions, mozzarella and creamy-sweet Montamore cheeses served atop a crust that’s brushed with olive oil and garlic. The pie is made even richer – too rich, to my taste – by touches of garlic aioli and truffle oil. Those perfectly delicious mushrooms and onions were yet another casualty of today’s truffle oil-happy food culture.

Of course, these are savory pies that are tried and true, as the Mellow Mushroom pizza chain has been around since 1974, when the first shop opened in Atlanta. Today there are at least 13 locations in Florida, the most recent being CityPlace, which opened in mid-January.

On the night of our visit, we found service to be chaotic. The place was packed and there seemed to be no grand plan for routing waiting diners. Staffers contradicted one another in telling us where we could sit while we waited. Toward the end of our wait, one harried server was nice enough to offer to fetch us a couple of beers from the bar. But our buzzer lights went off before he could return.

At long last we had a table in the electric, over-stimulated space that is Mellow Mushroom. Had the wait been longer, we might have demanded a bounce house.