Mantra, a restaurant located in Benson, is on corner on Maple St. It’s hard to see if you’re not looking for it. Mantra is considered a sports bar, but if you have ever eaten there you would see that it really isn’t. Mantra may have TVs playing different types of sports, but the food doesn’t represent a sports bar. They do have a few burger options but the restaurant is a little more high end and offers a lot more types of food for a lot of different types of people.

The restaurant’s feel inside and out is very trendy. They have cute sculptures when you walk in and also inside they keep the room slightly dimmed. The outdoor seating is outlined by little fairy lights.

The restaurant itself looks small on the outside, but once you go in there is a lot of seating. They even have an outdoor sitting area for when its nice outside. The issue though is that they jam pack the seats so there really isn’t much of a walkway between the tables. Which isn’t a good thing because it’s hard to move around and to get to your table and then leaving you have to maneuver around people and peoples bags hanging on the chairs.

One of the other main issues is the parking, their parking lot doesn’t have enough room for a lot of cars so you have to park across the street in neighboring parking lots which isn’t that big of a deal, but it isn’t ideal.

Mantras hours are varied throughout the week. Which is nice so people can find a time that works best for them. If you are thinking about going, you better go early or call in a reservation. Every time I’ve gone I’ve had to wait over an hour to get in. But is it worth it? I don’t know. That’s for you to find out. For me, I think that it really is. The restaurant has a breakfast menu thru dinner and dessert. My favorite time to go is for brunch. They have something for everyone. For me, someone who doesn’t like eggs, they have a whole part of the menu dedicated to food with no eggs.

They give you two menus one with their regular food items and then their specials for that time of day. So for breakfast, they give you their breakfast menu then their breakfast specials. On the back of the regular menu, you can find all the adult drinks and the sparkling water options.

The food isn’t very expensive either, they price their food at a really good price. For my mom, sister and I to eat pretty big meals it was only $48.00. The highest priced food only goes up to around $15. The highest priced food is the seafood options and their steak. The steak does go up to $18 because the fries are truffle infused.

I decided to get the biscuits and gravy with a side of potatoes. The food was really filling and I couldn’t finish all of it no matter how hard I tried. The food that I got was really good and had a lot of great flavors. But I think that they needed to add more salt and pepper. The biscuits were not soggy which is something hard to do when the gravy is over them and covering the whole biscuit. And the potatoes had a nice crunch to them.

I didn’t get anything special to drink, I just got water. I did try my sister’s lemonade and you can really tell that it is fresh squeezed. It’s nicely sour, but also sweet which is always a plus.

I would recommend this restaurant to all of my friends and family. I think isn’t for young kids it is geared towards teenagers and adults. This place has different food options for most types of people. I would rate this restaurant 4 out of 5 stars.