Some restaurants you find. Others find you. Jonathon’s Forestwood is the second kind. Somebody mentions it, you file it away, and then one morning you’re pulling into the parking lot at Forest Lane and the North Dallas Tollway wondering why you waited so long. The place has been drawing crowds since Jonathon and Christine Erdeljac opened the doors in September 2023. That opening came at the end of a two-year renovation that tested every bit of patience they had.
Before that they ran the beloved original in Oak Cliff for a decade. A rent dispute forced them out in 2021. They packed up everything — equipment, recipes, even the bathroom mirrors — and moved north.
Walk inside and you understand why people followed. Sage green walls, orange bar stools, coffee that shows up without being asked. It feels like it has been there forever. Jonathon Erdeljac (we humbly refer to him as the Gravy King) has been cooking in Dallas since 1998. He spent years at Bread Winners learning the craft before opening his first place in a repurposed Oak Cliff greenhouse in 2011. His wife Christine runs the front. Together they built something that Dallas didn’t know it was missing until it showed up.
The menu is diner comfort done right. Chicken fried steak that holds its breading. Biscuits and gravy made with house pepper biscuits and turkey sausage. A fried chicken and waffle that regulars will tell you changed their life a little. Benedicts, waffles six ways, salads that actually earn their spot on the menu. The burger lineup deserves its own conversation. The Pigg Mack — a spicy pork patty with pepper Jack, citrus slaw, caramelized onions, harissa aioli, and an over-easy egg — is the kind of sandwich you think about on the drive home.
But the patty melt is the one. It has been on this menu since the Oak Cliff days and it will likely be on this menu as long as Jonathon is standing at a grill. At $14 it is one of the best things you can order in Dallas right now.
It starts with a beef patty cooked on a flat top until it has a real crust. Not steamed, not babied. Cooked.
Sautéed mushrooms go on next. They add an earthiness that cuts through the richness of the beef in a way that makes you glad someone thought to put them there. The caramelized onions are done the right way, low and slow, until they are sweet and soft and barely holding their shape. No shortcuts. You can taste the difference. Swiss and provolone together. The Swiss brings sharpness. The provolone melts slow and pulls when you lift the sandwich. Both are doing real work.
The bread is grilled wheat, pressed flat until it is deep golden on both sides and just firm enough to hold everything together without turning into a brick.
And then there is the roasted garlic aioli, spread on both sides of the bread before it hits the griddle. You won’t clock it as a separate ingredient. You’ll just notice that everything tastes better than it should, and that’s the point. This is a sandwich built by someone who has thought about every layer. Nothing is there by accident. Nothing is missing.
Get there on a weekday if you can. The weekend crowds are real and the wait is real. Come hungry and come ready to make decisions, because the menu will tempt you away from the patty melt and you need to hold your ground.
Order it with the mac and cheese. Jonathon will tell you the same.
Jonathon’s Forestwood — 5337 Forest Lane, Dallas, TX 75244. Monday through Friday 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
