Double-check with the staff before ordering any vegan entrees.
Horror fans making their way through Kingsland, Texas, are in for a horrifically nostalgic dining experience if they stop at Hooper’s — a lovely Victorian building turned eatery that was once the home of the fictional cannibal Sawyer family from the 1974 classic “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
“It really feels like you’re stepping right into the movie set,” TikToker @theparanormalprincess_ shared with her fans as she visited the restaurant last month.
Bearing its name from the film’s screenwriter and director, Tobe Hooper, guests will have a chance to enjoy their meal in the same dining room where Leatherface and his deranged family once munched on their victims.
Not overwhelming its space with the same makeup as the fictional cannibalistic family would, it’s decorated subtlety with memorabilia from the cult classic — including signed photos from ‘Leatherface’ himself — actor Gunnar Hansen — and the film’s narrator, John Larroquette.
The casual Southern restaurant’s menu even hosts a delightful nod to the macabre masterpiece.
These include “Grandpa Sawyer,” “The Ripper” and “No One Lives Forever” — three drinks on the cocktail menu
The home was taken from the original filming location in Round Rock, Texas, and moved to its current location in the 1990s to persevere the treasured piece of slasher film history.
Though moved, the home still has a lingering charm of its 1974 set under its warm and inviting atmosphere, with the TikToker “highly” recommending fans of the franchises to check it out.
Now located about an hour west of Austin, the TikToker shared that if viewing the iconic set and memorabilia wasn’t enough to get fans to make the trip, the food and array of cocktails offered at its bar and lounge are worth the trek.
“We truly did enjoy our lunch here,” she said.
A native of Austin and graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Tobe Hooper was fresh on the film scene, working as an assistant film director at the university when he came up with “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
“I had been working on this other story for some months — about isolation, the woods, the darkness, and the unknown. It was around holiday season, and I found myself in the Ward’s hardware department, and I was still kind of percolating on this idea of isolation and such,” Hooper told the Austin Chronicle in 2000.
The director shared that the holiday crowds at the department store triggered something in his head that would unveil his film’s iconic trademark.
“I was just standing there in front of an upright display of chainsaws. And the focus just racked from my eyeball to the people to the saws — and the idea popped. I said, ‘Ooh, I know how I could get out of this place fast — if I just start one of these things up and make that sound,’” he shared with the outlet.
Following the bizarre thought, Hooper made his way home and put on the song “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” by Elton John, and the seeds of the film began sprouting.
“In a matter of literally seconds, literally under 30 seconds, I thought about that song and everything came to me,” he shared with the outlet.
Serial killer and real-life cannibal Ed Gein also inspired Hooper to develop the bizarre and sinister Sawyer family.
The filmmaker would go on to direct a number of highly acclaimed horror movies following the film’s success, like “Salem’s Lot,” “Poltergeist” and “Invaders from Mars.”
Hooper died of natural causes in 2017. He was 74.
“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” has become a generational horror movie classic, with Hooper turning a small $110k film budget into a $30 million box office success which spanned into numerous remakes and sequels over the decades — and now, a southern-style kitchen.