Fictional Dick Mondell is bringing a real burger joint to Jacksonville Beach

JACKSONVILLE BEACH | A popular drive-thru-only burger joint could be serving up smash burgers, fries and shakes plus breakfast sandwiches and plant-based options as early as this fall in Jacksonville Beach as its co-founders expand the restaurant's footprint in Northeast Florida.

Construction is well underway on Dick Mondell's Burgers & Fries at 1177 Third St. S., the third from co-founders and co-owners Connor Castelli and Chris Leckerling, who launched the Gainesville-based restaurant named for a figment of their culinary school imaginations in 2018.

The contractor "is hoping for a late fall or early winter" completion and opening, Castelli told the Times-Union.

"When we visit the site, they say that it's coming together well," Castelli said of the ground-up build that began last fall. Although not as quickly as they might like, he was philosophical about the progress: "When you're building something, you're crazy to expect anything else."

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If all goes well, the Jacksonville Beach location could open roughly five months after Dick Mondell's marked the grand opening of its second restaurant on April 23 at 1808 S. Monroe St. in Tallahassee.

Totaling about 1,500 square feet, the Jacksonville Beach restaurant won't have any inside seating. Instead, customers will place and get their orders using the drive-thru or walk-up windows.

A few picnic tables will provide outdoor seating on a small covered patio fenced with a wall and planters, according to plans submitted to the Jacksonville Beach Planning Commission.

Who is Dick Mondell?

Castelli and Leckerling developed the concept of Dick Mondell's Burger & Fries during a capstone project as students at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) at Greystone in St. Helena, Calif.

"The giveaway is there is no Dick Mondell. … When we were creating the idea of this brand, we wanted to create a restaurant that we wanted to eat at and that we wanted to be customers of," Leckerling previously told the Times-Union. "And that we could be excited about and wasn't just Chris and Connor's Burger Shack."

So they created possible backstories for the fictitious Dick Mondell.

"We played around with a couple of stories about who Dick Mondell might have been. But you know, he was just some guy who opened up a burger restaurant 50 years ago and nothing has changed and he does everything like he did when he first opened," Leckerling said.

In December 2018, the newly minted CIA graduates opened their first Dick Mondell's Burger & Fries at 412 SW 4th Ave. in Gainesville. Back then, the imaginary Dick Mondell sounded like an old football player.

"It really is kind of this sort of archetypal idea of something that is established and always has been there with this sort of verisimilitude," Leckerling said.

The "Dick" burger and sauce names "are kind of poking fun at the fast-food establishment," the restauranteurs previously noted.

Castelli and Leckerling collaborated on the menu, developing the recipes for beef and chicken burgers, salads and sides in their home kitchens. About half of their offerings are vegan or vegetarian.

The menu focuses on locally sourced, sustainable and fresh ingredients. The chicken burgers, for example, are made from "humanely raised and antibiotic-free" chickens from Joyce Farms in Winston-Salem, N.C., where the philosophy is "happy and healthy animals result in tastier animals."

The beef burger patties are from Florida-raised beef cattle, according to the restaurant's website.

Leckerling and Castelli believe "good ingredients make good food, and using the best ingredients available is what you should expect from us."

On the menu at Dick Mondell's

Notable menu items include:

• The Original Dick ($8.96): Two beef patties, lettuce, pickle, onion and Dick's Sauce

• Herbed Chicken Burger ($7.84): A 100 percent all-natural Joyce Farms chicken patty with lettuce, pickle, onion and mayo

• Breakfast Sandwich ($4.79): A toasted English muffin, cage-free egg, bacon and American cheese

• Garden & Grain Salad ($7.28): Green leaf lettuce, tomato, onion, assorted grains, chickpeas, cucumber and carrots. Salad dressing choices are Lemon Herb Vinaigrette, Dick's Sauce or Vegan Dick's Sauce

Dick Mondell's also offers the Impossible Burger and has a variety of other plant-based options. Depending on the size, the potato options include natural-cut regular fries ($1.68 to $2.80) and sweet potato tots ($2.80 to $3.92) the menu shows.

The popular cookie sandwiches ($4.48) are crafted with ice cream made on-site with milk from Wainwright Daily and Creamery in Live Oak.

Currently, the breakfast sandwich is available only in Tallahassee but will be offered in Jacksonville Beach, Castelli said.

Teresa Stepzinski is the dining reporter for the Times-Union. Follow her on Twitter @TeresaStepz or reach her via email at tstepzinski@jacksonville.com.

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This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Dick Mondell's bringing burgers, fries, shakes to Jacksonville Beach