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Talk of the Bay

Things are really cooking at new culinary arts center

By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published October 9, 2006

The folks who transformed Rolling Pin Kitchen Emporium from a pair of mall kitchen gadget stores into a culinary arts center in Brandon are off to a fast start.

"After our first seven weeks here, we're drawing 2½ times the traffic business we ever did in a mall," said Dave West, a former McDonald's Corp. executive and trained chef who owns Rolling Pin with his wife, Karen. "We've become a destination."

The Wests left WestShore Plaza in Tampa and Westfield Brandon mall in search of more space. They wanted to add cooking classes and food-prep demonstrations in their expanded cooking equipment store on Brandon Parkway south of the Westfield mall.

The store's cooking classes are sold out frequently enough that the couple is hiring a third chef and looking for speciality chefs to stage classes of their own.

The Viking stove-equipped, 1,000-square-foot kitchen/classroom, however, has proved to be too small, West said. The Emeril-style classroom, complete with ringside seating around a granite countertop, is jammed with stacks of pots and pans that are creeping into the retail part of the store.

Coming up: The Rolling Pin is getting a beer and wine license.

[Last modified October 9, 2006, 08:11:28]