Now Bonnell has opened Jon’s Grille, a burger and barbecue joint that he hopes will prove that the farm-to-table culture of Bonnell’s and Waters can translate to the fast casual, neighborhood joint.

Photo courtesy of Jon’s Grille

I recently sat down with Bonnell at Jon’s Grille. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the patio doors across the front of the restaurant were open to the sidewalk. Bonnell waved at friends as they came in to eat lunch. As a fourth generation Fort Worthian, he knows or is related to everyone in town.

“You know how they say everyone is separated by only six degrees? Well, in Fort Worth, it’s two degrees of separation.” And, it seems, everyone in Fort Worth is coming to Jon’s Grille.

During the late ‘80s and throughout the ‘90s, the original Jon’s Grille on University was THE place to get a burger and a beer in Fort Worth. A generation of Fort Worthians carved their names into the walls of what Bonnell fondly recalls as “a great burger dive.” Bonnell recalls coming into for a burger and getting to know the eponymous Jon Meyerson who worked the counter. “He had a really infectious personality,” Bonnell said with a smile. “He loved to hang out in front and talked to everybody who came in. We just kind of hit it off – talked about food and cooking. When I came back from culinary school and said I was thinking about opening a restaurant, he was like, ‘Don’t do it, man! Don’t do it!’”

And then in 2001, Jon Meyerson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, sending shockwaves throughout the community he built. While his sister tried to run the restaurant for a while, she ultimately let it go. “She finally said that running a burger joint was not for her,” Bonnell said.

Fast forward 21 years, and there’s a new Jon’s Grille by TCU.

Photo courtesy of Jon’s Grille

The idea for a burger and barbecue place came about because of Bonnell’s brother, Ric. Ric is a physician, a professor at TCU’s medical school, and a rancher. Bonnell grinned, “In high school, Ric worked as a ranch hand to make money for his first car. I worked in a clothing shop.” Ric lives with his family on a ranch in Tolar, and he posed a very interesting question to Bonnell.

“What if we raised our own cattle for beef at your restaurants?”

Bonnell said that got him thinking. “Let’s face it. Everybody in Texas is born knowing how to cook a good steak. It’s in the genes.” To make his steaks truly unique, what if he and his brother raised their own beef, beef that you can’t buy in the store? And thus the Bonnell Beef Company was born.

After a lot of research, the brothers have hit on a winning formula for their cattle. The Bonnells breed Akaushi bulls (one of four Japanese cattle breeds known as “waygu”) to Angus heifers. This produces beef that is heart healthy but also delicious.

“Ric wanted the beef to be heart healthy. I just wanted them to taste good,” Bonnell laughed. “The physician versus the chef, I guess.”

The Bonnells control every aspect of the production, from the grazing to the very specific finishing feed which ensures beautiful marbling to the processing. The cattle go from the ranch to a small processor to the restaurants.

Photo courtesy of Jon’s Grille

Most people know about what are called “glory cuts” – the filet mignons, ribeyes, and strips. Bonnell said, “Those are easy to sell, but that’s only 11% of a cow. We had to think, ‘If we’re really going to raise our own cattle for the restaurants, what are we going to do with the rest of the cow?’”

The answer was obvious. “We make the finest hamburgers ever. All the brisket and short ribs and flavorful cuts get ground into our burger meat.”

Bonnell said that opening Jon’s Grille was something of a no-brainer. “I don’t have a lot of fine dining left in me. Fine dining is tough. It’s involved. But this? This is fun.”

Jon’s Grille opened in September of 2022, two years after the pandemic pushed back the planned opening. Bonnell had found the location on West Berry right before the world shut down; once things opened up again, the work started on transforming what had been the Aardvark back into a restaurant.

Photo courtesy of Jon’s Grille

“It needed a complete re-do,” Bonnell said. “We had to take the roof off!” Because the building had been empty for a few years, nothing was up to code. “We took it down to the studs and built it back to our specifications.”

Because of the delay, Bonnell and McOwen had to scrap some of their plans, including a rooftop bar that would have looked out over TCU. However, they left that possibility for later. When it came to naming the new restaurant, Bonnell remembered his old friend.

“First of all, he spelled his name the right way,” Bonnell joked. “But it just seemed right. I talked to his sister who said she would be honored if we dedicated the place to Jon. She had a portrait of him playing his guitar that she gave to us. Jon was a guitar player and instructor, and he played at the Aardvark all the time. It felt right to come full circle, and now we have that picture of Jon hanging on the wall.”

The Meyerson family came to the opening of the new Jon’s Grille. “Everybody loved it. His parents, his siblings… His nephew is working for us now. Jon’s brother showed up wearing the old Jon’s Grille tee shirt, and he pulled me aside to give me Jon’s original business card.”

While the new Jon’s Grille is dedicated to Jon Meyerson’s memory, it is not a faithful recreation of the original. Bonnell didn’t even want to try to recreate it.

Photo courtesy of Jon’s Grille

“First of all, we didn’t want it to be a dive bar. While I love a good dive, I wanted this to be a place for everybody – families coming in after soccer games, college students, faculty… And really, trying to recreate everything wouldn’t have worked anyway. No matter how perfectly we did it, the burgers wouldn’t be the same as you remember them because you aren’t the same.”

So the new Jon’s Grille is all Bonnell. From partnering with local producers like Best Maid Pickles to meticulously curating the menu, Jon’s Grille is fast casual as seen through Bonnell’s fine dining eyes. And it’s truly delicious tribute to a Fort Worth legend.

The post A Delicious Tribute to a Fort Worth Legend first appeared on Tanglewood Moms.

The Tower went dark in the late 1970s as structural damage mounted. Her signature lights were turned off. Shattered glass-block columns were shuttered for decades with metal panels.

Photo courtesy of Will Rogers Memorial Center

More than 40 years later, Pioneer Tower is gleaming again and even more stunning after completion of an extensive $4.7 million City of Fort Worth refurbishment project in 2019 – an achievement that recently earned Historic Fort Worth’s 2022 Preservation Project Award.

“Pioneer Tower is an irreplaceable, historic treasure,” said Mike Crum, director of the City of Fort Worth Public Events Department. “It’s an iconic landmark recognizable by generations of Fort Worthians and millions of visitors. The tower has been an inspiration in many ways, including the design of Dickies Arena. We applaud the vision and initiatives that have saved Pioneer Tower and we will continue to invest $52.8 million in planned capital improvements across the Will Rogers Memorial Center campus in the next few years.”

“Thanks to leadership from the City of Fort Worth that began with a successful National Register of Historic Places nomination in 2016, Pioneer Tower is once again restored and shining brightly,” said Jerre Tracy, Executive Director of Historic Fort Worth, Inc. (HFW).  “As the beacon for the Will Rogers complex, Pioneer Tower is a symbol of civic pride, and this project has rekindled that pride for current and future generations.”

Designed during the Great Depression by Fort Worth architects Wyatt C. Hedrick and Herman Koeppe, Pioneer Tower was art-deco sleek, chic and dazzling at night on all sides with bright columns of light shining through glass-block glazing and huge “lanterns” atop each corner. She became the developing Cultural District’s beacon, but natural forces began to pull her apart.

Photo courtesy of Will Rogers Memorial Center

John Roberts, AIA, past chairman of HFW, nominated Pioneer Tower for the award. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Roberts said the tower was damaged from shear movement and deflection, causing the structure to twist. There were no annual inspections back then as the City of Fort Worth will conduct from now on.

“The main challenge,” he wrote for the HFW award presentation, “was to stabilize the tower inside using a fiberglass reinforcement system at the walls where shear forces were highest by repairing and replacing several turnbuckles.”

Restoration project architects were Fort Worth-based firm Elements of Architecture. General contractor Muckleroy & Falls of Fort Worth carried out the renovations.

The team corrected a wide range of infrastructure issues, sandblasted the exterior brick and limestone and restored the clear glass-block columns that extend from the 13^th to the 27^th floors on all four sides of the tower. The columns required more than 6,210 pieces of 6x6x4 Argus glass blocks that were custom-manufactured in New Zealand to match the original glass blocks.

While great care was taken to assure architectural integrity and accuracy, one new 21^st-century internal feature tapped Pioneer Tower’s potential as a showstopper: a programmable LED lighting system that produces colorful light shows to mark holidays and special events.

The post Pioneer Tower Redo Wins Preservation Prize first appeared on Tanglewood Moms.