Jack Perkins, Jeana Johnson teaming up for new Dallas restaurant

Your favorite no-tell motel is no more. Wrecking crews started dismantling the Love Field Inn on Mockingbird Lane today, readying the land for a new restaurant that will sport some badassery from Jack Perkins.

Perkins, the restaurateur who said it doesn’t take a genius to cook good bbq then made good on his word at The Slow Bone, will debut Mockingbird Diner, a breakfast-lunch-and-dinner restaurant.

Though he sold his controlling interest in Slow Bone, Perkins still owns Maple & Motor, a Texas Monthly pick for one of the the top 50 burger joints in Texas.

“I’ve never done three meals a day before, but everything I’ve done has led me to this,” Perkins told the Hatch.

The plans call for Mockingbird Diner to have roughly 200 seats, including patio seating, with design elements borrowed from southern churches. A-frame roof. Lots of natural light. Tables arranged along a central corridor and angled toward one end of the building as if they were pews pointing toward a pulpit.

At that pulpit: Jeana Johnson, who will serve as top chef, and Steve Spence, who will run the front of the house as GM. (Johnson has plenty of time on her hands: she announced the closing of her Good 2 Go Taco joint yesterday.)

“We’re going to cook standard Texas food, the kind of stuff my mother and maybe your mother cooked everyday when we were growing up. Remember when your mom used to cook the same dishes every week? She put the menu on a rotation, and so will we. Every few days you’ll see the same dishes, so you can come in for your favorites.”

The one thing you wont see on the menu: BBQ.

“Never again,” says Perkins.

He expects Mockingbird Diner to open late this year.

(photo: looks like Perkins, left, will have to find a new no-tell motel to share his bromance with Chad Houser, right)