Take Jeff Bridges’ character from The Big Lebowski and add a couple inches, a white chef’s coat and a sizzling grill full of breakfast staples, and you have Jonathon Erdeljac.
For the last 12 years, Erdeljac has manned the grill at each of his namesake restaurants with a relaxed enthusiasm and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. In Oak Cliff, Jonathon’s Diner serves as the “neighborhood breakfast place,” known for comfort meals like patty melts and chicken and waffles, made by The Dude himself.
Erdeljac’s wife, Christine, manages the restaurant and can occasionally be caught waiting tables during the lunch rush.
Both Erdeljacs have a background in the Dallas culinary world. Jonathon served as the corporate chef at Bread Winners, and spent time at Brinker. Christine managed at Bread Winners and several of the Nordstrom restaurants.
While working in the corporate dining industry, Erdeljac ignored the “If I owned this place,” talk that permeated kitchens, instead focusing on acing every role he took on.
“When I was a dishwasher, I like to believe that I washed those dishes like I owned those dishes,” he says.
His first restaurant came to fruition in 2011. Jonathon’s Oak Cliff opened with a breakfast heavy menu in the formerly green house on Beckley that is now home to Restaurant Beatrice.
Then he opened Kessler Park Eating House, which specialized in dinner plates, in 2015.
“It was kind of a passion project for me, because it was a lot of my own personal kind of family recipes,” Jonathon says. “And it was a pretty decent success, but it was a lot of work.”
He cooked breakfast in the mornings and dinner in the evenings, shifting just half a mile down Beckley each day to transition between restaurants.
In the 10 years Jonathon’s Oak Cliff was open, “there was never a point” something wasn’t broken. At one point, construction forced the Erdeljacs to temporarily close down Jonathon’s Oak Cliff, so they moved the breakfast menu over to Kessler Park Eating House.
“The first day we were busy all day, but it was Jonathon’s all day. It was just like nobody could care less (about the dinner menu) and so we kind of pivoted at that point. When we reopened the original store we decided to transition (Kessler Park Eating House) to Jonathon’s Diner,” he says. “For four years, we operated as Jonathon’s Diner and Jonathon’s Oak Cliff. And we had two restaurants, the same exact menu, same everything, literally half a mile apart.”
Once you get out of the dinner game, it’s impossible to go back.
As much as the Erdeljacs enjoyed sharing their family recipes at Kessler Park Eating House, the transition to all breakfast-focused businesses meant a healthier work-life balance.
“Our life is 100 times better. Our mental health is better, our physical health is better, and our business is thriving even better,” Christine says. “We can actually go out to dinner and enjoy our normal life.”
In 2021, Jonathon’s Oak Cliff closed, but the diner has remained a flourishing staple in our neighborhood’s brunch scene.
The menu is not trying to reinvent the breakfast wheel.
Plates of biscuits and gravy, eggs and bacon and berry-covered waffles are dependable offerings. There are entire days where Erdeljac cooks only chicken and waffles, the Oak Cliff favorite.
While relentless waves of the same dish may put any other “food artist” in a rut, Erdeljac says the opening of a new Jonathon’s location, Jonathon’s Forestwood, has sparked his creativity.
The new store required a complete gutting and renovation, something the owners are used to at this point. Three restaurants in, the Erdeljacs are the Chip and Joanna Gaines of the restaurant industry.
Touches of Jonathon’s Oak Cliff can be found at the Forestwood store. The mirrors hanging from the wall near the back of the restaurant are the original Oak Cliff location’s bathroom mirrors.
And, in addition to Forestwood customers ordering a wider variety of plates, the location’s menu offers salads and sandwiches that are not available in Oak Cliff.
“I kept saying this is going to be different, people are going to eat differently in North Dallas, I just know it,” Christine says. “(In Forestwood) it’s been the chicken salad sandwich. Chicken and waffles rules Oak Cliff, I mean that is what we are known for down there.”
For now, Jonathon is spending most days cooking in the Forestwood kitchen to give the store the same foundation his Oak Cliff location has.
“We’re at the point (at the diner) where it’s like it’s the same people who come in for the same things all the time,” he says. “(At Forestwood) we’re not at that point yet where it’s like these four guys come in every Wednesday because they love the patty melt and all four are going to order the patty melt.”
While the diner may be Jonathon’s middle child, the Erdeljacs are no less devoted to serving the neighborhood that got them started as restaurant owners.
“It’s 36 hours a day, eight days a week. I mean, it’s as simple as that. It never stops, and even when you’re off there’s stuff to do,” he says. “We were getting our nails done yesterday and I remembered I needed to soak the beans. So we ended up back at work after we had our mani-pedis because I had to put the beans in the water so my 15 bean soup would be ready.”
