Known for smash burgers and fictitious name, drive-thru restaurant opens in Jacksonville Beach
A highly anticipated restaurant known for its fresh, hot-off-the-grill smash burgers and homestyle fries as well as its fictitious namesake, is now welcoming hungry guests to its drive-thru and walk-up windows in Jacksonville Beach.
Dick Mondell's Burgers & Fries opens Monday at 1177 Third St. S. — the third location of the Gainesville-based restaurant chain founded and owned by two friends with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor who met in culinary school.
The new site has a few outdoor picnic tables but no indoor seating. About three blocks from the Atlantic Ocean, it replaces a defunct, weather-beaten former self-service car wash.
Co-founders and co-owners Connor Castelli and Chris Leckerling launched the restaurant concept named for a figment of their culinary school imaginations in 2018 in Gainesville.
The Jacksonville Beach restaurant — on the same block as Beach Hut Cafe — has been about a year in the making. It joins the original Dick Mondell's at 412 SW. Fourth Ave. in Gainesville and the second location at 1808 S. Monroe St. in Tallahassee.
Topping Dick Mondell's menu
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. It also mirrors the slightly naughty but good-natured sense of humor of its fictitious namesake, Dick Mondell.
Signature menu offerings include:
The Original Big Dick ($10.04): Two beef patties with lettuce, pickle, onion and Dick's Sauce.
Herbed Chicken Burger ($8.78): A 100% all-natural Joyce Farms chicken patty with lettuce, pickle, onion and mayo.
Impossible Burger ($11.92): A vegan patty with lettuce, pickle, onion and vegan Dick's Sauce.
Garden & Grain Salad ($8.15): Green leaf lettuce, tomato, onion, assorted grains, chickpeas, cucumber and carrots. Dressing choices are Lemon Herb Vinaigrette, Dick's Sauce or Vegan Dick's Sauce.
Side items include Natural Cut Fries, $1.88 for a small size or $$3.14 for large; Sweet Potato Tots at $3.14 for a small size or $4.39 for large; and "Dirty" Kettle Chips for $3.14, according to the menu.
Dick Mondell's also offers milkshakes for $6.27 in chocolate, vanilla, coffee and Orange Creamsicle that are made with all-natural Palazzolo's Artisan Dairy ice cream.
Desserts include an ice cream cookie sandwich for $2.18 and a Waffle Cookie made from two in-house vegan pizzelles, the menu shows.
So 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 at Greystone in St. Helena, Calif.
"The giveaway is there is no Dick Mondell," Leckerling previously told the Times-Union a June 2022 interview. "… 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. 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 Mondell.
"We played around with a couple of stories about who Dick Mondell might have been," Leckerling said. "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."
The end result: The imaginary Dick Mondell sounded like an old football player.
Cheeky humor
With burgers named "The Original Big Dick" and "Dick Junior," the restaurant — which also has "Dick's Sauce" — serves up cheeky humor. The double entendre names are intended as a good-natured joke to make people smile. They're also "kind of poking fun at the fast-food establishment," Leckerling previously told the Times-Union.
"We as a brand try not to push it too far," he said. "Obviously, there's a little bit of sophomoric humor to it, but we try to do it with a wink and a nod and kind of let the guests push it as far as they want without us trying to be vulgar about it."
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Totaling about 1,500 square feet, the Jacksonville Beach restaurant opens at 11 a.m. Monday. Its hours of operation going forward hadn't been announced as of Sunday.
Teresa Stepzinski is the dining reporter for the Times-Union. Follow her on X, formerly known as 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 Burger & Fries opens restaurant in Jacksonville Beach
