Walker’s Drive In was taken over by Chef Joe Cravens in July 2025 after two decades under Chef Derek Emerson. Originally from Memphis, Cravens worked under numerous award winning chefs and also for US Foods as a Territory Manager. They offer lunch and dinner Tues to Fri (only dinner on Sat.). It does look like a drive-in but now it’s only ‘walk-in’ with reservations. They had a good-sized patio and an equal size interior dining room with booths along the wallks and nice sized tables in the middle. The white cloths are under a hard plexiglass sheet and the lighting is dimmed. Five stools are at the counter facing the window to the kitchen and service area in between. There were a lot of daily specials in addition to the printed menu.and a large selection of half bottles of wine on their list. Service was good and friendly and the place really had an energy but much of the food was too salty and blah. Perhaps it was due to Cravens not there that night or we ordered badly. It certainly had a steady stream of customers, so they’re doing something right.
Set-up
Food
BBQ fried oysters were covered with warm brie and apple slaw and came 5 to an order. The good oysters were lost in too much coating and dressing. The bbq was an orange dressing that was on some slaw underneath and had no spiciness to speak of. The brie was good and well melted but these didn’t excite me like the similar ones I’ve had in New Orleans.
A half of the B.L.T. wedge was made with iceberg lettuce, applewood smoked bacon, tomato, red onion, crumbled blue cheese and a creamy buttermilk dressing. It was nice that the menu odered 2 portion sizes and surprisingly the server suggested that the small would be plenty for the two of us. It would have been hard to divide in the kitchen in that the bacon was in the form of one strip across the top. We were able to divide it and mix it all together, Nicely the tomatoes and onions came already chopped but the blue cheese was too mild and the bacon lost its crisp in the mixing.
An 8 ounce USDA prime filet had been aged at least 45 days and then plated with bacon-cheddar mashed potatoes, sautéed asparagus and crispy onions. The meat was cooked a good rare as ordered and quite smokey. It was tasty with the sauce and tender. Some fun asparagus, a good mashed potato mix and crisp onion strings and you have yourself a winning plate.
Wood grilled wagyu hanger steak came with parmesan truffle fries, roasted mushrooms and red wine sauce. The meat was cooked nicely rare as ordered and came sliced mixed in the sauce. Then a huge pile of fries was piled on 2/3 of the plate. They were probably good fries but I couldn’t eat them them were so salty and they bled into the sauce with the meat to make that less than good too. This was not a success.
A side of crispy onion strings was much better in my book. They were crisp, not salty with sweet onion flavor not drowned by fryer coating. These were a success.
I took a photo of the dessert menu but couldn’t make myself want anything on it.
