SCHWEINE TIME
Chef-owner David Walker offers German food with a Southern influence on Madison.
“Schweinehaus” isn’t an old German family name, said David Scott Walker, chef/owner of the Overton Square restaurant.
It means “pig house,” Walker said. “We were looking for a name for a German beer hall and I was like, ‘Wait a second. We’re in Memphis. We love pork. And we love beer. Those are like the two greatest things we have going in this town!’”
The restaurant, located in the renovated building that once housed Paulette’s at 2110 Madison, offers German food with a Southern twist. “German fare is really heavy, so that’s why I had to add that Memphis influence and my own influence to kind of lighten things up. Everybody is a little bit more health conscious these days. We always wanted to go with the concept of a little bit of German, but not completely traditional. I’ve never been big into doing absolutely traditional food. I think it’s kind of boring. You have to put your own stamp on things.”
A native Memphian, Walker’s family is “half German, half Scottish. And a little bit of French — but we surrendered that.”
His mother cooked “traditional American fare” rather than German food. “Mainly, our menus for the family were kind of amended to fit my brother’s palate a little bit to make everybody happy,” said Walker, 39. “If we ever had sauerkraut or things like that, it’d have to be a small amount because we didn’t want to waste too much.”
His brother, Andy, now Schweinehaus general manager, used to be the “hamburger-mustard-only kind of guy.”
The Butcher Shop, which was on Front Street, was Walker’s favorite restaurant as a child. “I still miss that place. I loved the open grills and being able to cook your own if you wanted to.”
He would order the rib-eye and grill his own. “I remember barely looking over the grill.”
He played football at Briarcrest Christian School, but, he said, “That ended up a tragic end, snapping my leg in half. I was in practice, and I hyperextended it the wrong way, and the kneecap shattered my lower leg bone. Left side. Still feel it every time it rains.”
Walker’s first job, which he landed when he was in high school, was cooking pizzas at Little Caesars. “It’s not the most complex food in the world.”
He later got a job at TGI Fridays in Germantown. “I was 16 years old when I started and quickly made my way up to their head saute cook.”
Walker then moved to the front of the house, where he worked as a waiter and bartender through college. For three years, he managed the old Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant. “I had a goal back then to have my own place at 30. That didn’t happen.”
While majoring in accounting at the University of Memphis, Walker got a job at the corporate office at the old Union Planters bank. “That lasted nine months. I wanted to jump out of a window.”
He went back to restaurant jobs. He worked as a bartender/server at River Oaks Restaurant, where he was impressed with the sommelier, who grew up in Queens.
“He was a huge influence on me as far as moving up to New York,” Walker said. “I wanted to chase that sommelier dream. And I wanted to get that sommelier certificate. There’s only a few places in the country you can really go after that.”
After moving to New York in 2006, Walker got a job as a bartender at the old ReBar, a trendy Brooklyn restaurant. On one of his nights off, he attended a New Year’s Eve party. “Somehow I ended up cooking for it. We did brisket. It was all good Southern food.”
The party lasted through the night. “All of a sudden I’m cooking breakfast. Making biscuits from scratch. And there was this one girl from South Africa named Melody. She grabbed me by my shirt and said, ‘What are you doing? Why are you not in the kitchen?’ I was like, ‘That’s a really good question.’”
He realized he always loved cooking, but he was “chasing something else.”
Acclaimed chef Jacques Pépin was his tour guide when Walker was considering enrolling at the French Culinary Institute. “Just talking to him on the tour kind of set it right there. I was like ‘All right. Let’s get the paperwork done. Let’s do this.’ It cost a ton of money, but it was worth it. I guess growing up watching him on PBS with Julia Child — I don’t get star-struck often, but that got to me, his presence. To me, he was one of the world’s greatest chefs if not the best.”
Walker stood out in school, said Tim Shaw, one of his instructors.
“A lot of students who started going to culinary school about 10 years or so ago saw themselves as being the next Guy Fieri,” Shaw said. “They were doing it because they thought the industry was full of celebrity and flash and charm and stuff. And David was so much more basic. He was curious about the basics and didn’t really care about the molecular gastronomy and the foams. He was much more interested in simpler, just fun cooking. He was interested in the craft of cooking rather than the veneer of the celebrity status.”
And, said Shaw, “A lot of previous students would stay in New York or go work in Barcelona. It’s great to see him go down to Memphis in a restaurant that specializes in pig when everybody else is interested in quinoa and kale.”
While in school, Walker was invited by chef Christopher Lee to intern at the Manhattan restaurant Aureole. Walker worked there for three months before taking a head chef job at a new gastropub, West 3rd Common, in NoHo. He was allowed to take a threemonth leave of absence from the school.
Walker was at West 3rd Common for three years.
“He put together an outstanding menu, and most of the items that he put on the menu are still in place six years later,” said the restaurant’s owner, Dan Warren. “We make a steamed burger, which is not a common way to prepare a burger. It’s well known throughout New York City. There have been a number of write-ups about our burger. And that was all him. He came up with that system. It’s our biggest seller and the reason many customers come back time and time again.”
About three years ago, Walker decided to return to Memphis. “Mainly to be around family,” he said.
He also wanted to open a restaurant with his family. He wanted “a German beer hall. Lofty ceilings and a loud, raucous atmosphere.”
Customers would dine at long, communal tables. “You sit down at a communal table; you got people coming up and sitting next to you. You’re going to make new friends, new connections. What better way to make a business deal or a new connection than over a meal or a beer?”
While searching for locations, Walker discovered the building that once housed Paulette’s. “Walking through the door just screamed ‘Beer garden!’ Screamed ‘Beer hall!’ If I’m not mistaken, Paulette’s was French, but it was more of a Northeastern Alsatian French kind of a thing.”
The building was in ruins. “It was almost to the point of bulldozing when we came in. It was in really bad shape. It was down to the concrete. There were holes all in the ceiling.”
Renovation took about eight months. “We put a whole new roof on it and got everything sealed up nice and tight. The good thing about that was it was a shell. So whatever Paulette’s kitchen had, I wasn’t stuck with. We got to redesign everything.”
He describes his food as “traditional Southern with a Bavarian twist. I smoke a lot of meats, so our goulash (is made) with a brisket. Normally, it’s made with a top round. It has a little bit of a different flavor to it.”
Walker wanted to feature “a little bit more of what Memphis likes. So I added smoked chicken wings, which we smoke ourselves.”
Sunday nights are reserved for Walker’s fried chicken. “I’ve perfected my fried chicken through years in New York.”
He’s working on different concepts for restaurants he wants to open in Memphis. A Schweinehaus in another region of the United States is under consideration.
Walker may be the only person who can’t enjoy his communal tables the way he’d like to. “One of the things when I moved back down here that I missed about New York is not having a good beer hall where I could go get a liter of beer. And now I really can’t do that much here because I don’t want my employees to disrespect me. I’m still trapped a little bit. So if anybody else wants to open one, they’re quite welcome to.”