Check out the WFAA Story written by Kim Pierce about the Milestone Culinary Arts Center and Viking Cooking School!
“The whisks and pots of the former Viking store on McKinney Avenue are long gone, but the spot is still all about Viking, and then some.
“This is the home of Milestone Distribution,” says Cordon Bleu-trained Sharon Van Meter, whose SVM Productions handles events at the store. Those range from sit-down dinners out front to cooking classes in the demonstration theater and hands-on kitchen, holdovers from the store’s previous incarnation. “This is their showroom,” the chef says. “The whole idea is to come in, hang out, cook on them, watch me cook on them.”
“Them” are Viking’s heavy-duty, restaurant-inspired stoves as well as a working Aga, the English cast-iron cooker that looks like a stove with doors and quickens the pulse of many a foodie.
Besides the hands-on stoves, Milestone rotates nonworking displays of new Viking products and accessories, such as wine cellars that fit under the counter and pull out like drawers.
Ms. Van Meter also produces the Sunday KRLD-AM (1080) radio show “Taste of … With Dan Potter and Sharon Van Meter” in the demonstration theater.
Scurrying from showroom to patio to kitchen, her enthusiasm is contagious.
“We have found that food’s exciting again,” she says. And classes like the sold-out one with Asian Mint chef-owner Nikky Phinyawatana suggest she’s not the only one. “
-Kim Pierce