Hut’s Hamburgers has lived many lives. It opened as Sammie’s Drive-In on South Congress Avenue in 1939 but changed hands and styles—first becoming a lounge, then a Mexican restaurant—until Homer “Hut” Hutson bought the place in 1969.

Hutson renamed the restaurant Hut’s Hamburgers and moved it to West Sixth Street.

In 1981, Mike “Hutch” Hutchinson, then 27 years old, pooled together money with a couple of business partners and bought Hut’s, which he still runs today.

“When we took it over, we wanted to have a kind of nostalgic feel about it,” Hutchinson said.

The interior is decorated from floor to ceiling with pennants—representing Ohio State, Princeton and everywhere in between—customers have brought in.

Photos of bands that performed at Hut’s in the 1980s watch over diners, adding to the nostalgia.

But other mementos are more fleeting.

“Dennis Quaid claims that he fell in love with Meg Ryan here,” when the pair, now divorced, were filming the 1988 movie D.O.A. in Austin, Hutchinson said.

While the decor is old-fashioned, the menu has changed with the times, adding grass-fed buffalo and longhorn beef burgers sourced from Texas ranchers, vegan patties and gluten-free buns. “We try the best we can to keep up with what people want,” he said.

Attracting customers downtown has grown more challenging since the early ’80s when traffic was less congested, parking less complicated and the local restaurant scene less saturated.

“The whole dynamic has changed,” Hutchinson said, explaining that most Central Austin neighborhoods have grown to include bars and restaurants of their own. “You don’t need to come downtown unless you absolutely have to—and a lot of people avoid it.”

For the first time since 1969, people can find Hut’s somewhere new: at a recently opened second location inside the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

Although some modifications have been made, Hutchinson aims to provide the full Hut’s experience for customers unfamiliar with the local institution.

“We’re real close to making it exactly like it is here; that’s our goal,” he said.