Reopened A & Dubs overwhelmed in first days

New A & Dubs owners Ryan Spears and Michael Koralia at the counter of their tiny Lincoln Park restaurant. (Photo by Paul Lundgren)

Anticipation had been building for three months when the A & Dubs drive-in restaurant quietly reopened on June 12. By the next day the news had spread and the new staff was clearly not prepared for the onslaught of hungry Duluthians.

“We apologize so much,” read a post on the A & Dubs Facebook page. “We are closing today at 5pm due to lack of supplies. No excuses, we will do better soon with our end of this. Thank you all for your patience.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise that a seasonal eatery that was so beloved and had been mourned so widely when it didn’t open for the summer two years ago would be completely slammed with business when word got around that it had definitively come back from the dead.

After it was revealed in early March that — after two years in mothballs following many decades of unbroken summertime operation — the iconic burger joint would be returning under new ownership, people across the region who had made A & Dubs meals a regular part of their summer diets throughout their lives rejoiced. But the question immediately arose: would it be the same? Or would it be some mutated version of what people actually wanted?

New owners Michael Koralia and Ryan Spears had this very concern on their minds. For Koralia, there was no point in trying to revive the business if he wasn’t able to give people the experience and the foods they had enjoyed since the 1950s. And there was a personal angle for him, too.

“My mom’s side of the family and Syl’s family were very close, growing up,” he said, referring to Syl Hantz, the man who had run A & Dubs since the late 1970s with his wife, Sandy. “My uncles are friends with Syl. There’s always been a close connection, there.”

One of Koralia’s earliest memories is of eating at the famed Lincoln Park drive-in.

“I had to have been 5 or 6 years old, sitting in my dad’s ’69 Chevy pickup, eating off of the glove box,” he said. “Now, as an adult, I have children who I introduced to that place, and we probably ate there once or twice a week — just because it wasn’t open for very long. On my mom’s side of the family, we used to have a friendly competition every year to see who could be the first one to go during the season. You never knew exactly when the opening date would be. You would just kind of hear the rumor.”

“And I think that’s what’s special with A & Dubs,” Koralia continued, “is not only do I have those memories, a lot of people do, right? They remember the first time they were there as a kid or whatever. I mean, that place being open as long as it has — it’s touched a lot of different generations.”

When illness forced the Hantz’s to not reopen in summer 2024, it was unclear if the business would ever return. It wasn’t until the end of the following summer that Koralia started to consider taking it on.

“I had a change with my profession,” he said. “I drove semi for 23 years. I delivered food to restaurants for the majority of that time. In 2022, I had reconstructive Achilles surgery.”

After realizing his driving days were done, he dipped for a while into being a food service sales rep, but it didn’t take. Then he and Spears started a golf cart repair-and-rental business. It was a time of transition. Then Koralia heard A & Dubs was for sale. Before he knew it he was touring the building. By the time the tour was over he and Spears had decided to become restaurateurs.

Vehicles begin to fill the A & Dubs drive-in area before the dinner rush on Wednesday. The restaurant at 3131 W. Third St. is open Tuesdays Through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. (Photo by Paul Lundgren)

“We had a really quick conversation in the parking lot, and I was like ‘I love this place. I’d hate to see it go away,’” Koralia said.

In an era of big-box retailers and corporate fast-food chains, the idea of a well-used drive-in coming back after what seemed to be an abrupt, permanent end is a rarity. And that was part of the appeal — here was an opportunity to right a wrong, to return a source of joy to its place in the landscape where it had quietly operated for around 75 years.

“Places like this have died off,” Koralia said. “The little mom-and-pop places. They’ve all disappeared. This one, I just couldn’t stand seeing it disappear. I want my kids’ kids to be able to enjoy this and have those same memories that I have of it.”

Koralia and Spears bought the building and all that came with it. In the early spring, the property looked a little worse for the wear, with cracked bricks and spraypainted graffiti marring its facade. They got to work fixing up the kitchen, getting things up to code and modernizing a few things. The building got a new coat of paint. And then, just like that, they were open for business.

There were changes: a photo circulated online of a new slickly-printed menu board that replaced the old hand-painted ones. On it were new burger-size options and some fresh menu items, but it appeared that a lot of the old favorites were still there. And this was largely the goal — to reopen the place and make changes where needed, while trying to hew closely to the original vibe.

“Syl and Sandy and our wives have all sat in a room multiple times and discussed different things about the business,” Koralia said. “One was the recipes. Sandy’s had these recipes since her father owned it, when it was an A&W. Barbecue sauce, coleslaw — that was something they gifted to us, so we can continue again with the same food. I wasn’t trying to start a new burger place. I wanted to continue something. If we wouldn’t have gotten those recipes, I never would’ve bought it.”

Early online chatter on social media suggests that people are happy with the items they ordered in the first few hours of A & Dubs being back, and the restaurant has asked for patience as they figure out how to operate smoothly — and not run out of food — after two years in hibernation. But all signs point to their goals being sensible ones, and Koralia and Spears have in hand the recipes that they know people want to eat. Over the next few weeks, and until the restaurant that once again holds the crown as the oldest drive-in in the region closes for the winter, people will get the chance to relive their fondest gastronomic memories and see if the new era can compare to the previous one.

“I want to put the same quality food — the same tastes — on customers’ plates,” Koralia said, “because that’s what everybody enjoyed.”