arts&life

tv

The Next
MasterChef
Junior?

Set your DVRs to fi nd out whether Huntington

Woods’ Sammy Vieder made the cut.

JENNIFER LOVY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
BRETT MOUNTAIN PHOTOGRAPHER

42

February 22 • 2018

jn

C

ookbooks.
Ever since he was a pre-
schooler, there was always
at least one on Sammy Vieder’s
nightstand.
“I don’t ever remember him
not having a cookbook to
read,” recalls his mom, Stacy
Vieder. “He had a dictionary of
cooking terms and when he was
really little I would read different
passages to him.”
Vieder, now 13, says he acci-
dentally stumbled upon his
passion about a decade ago
when he walked into his family
room while there was a cooking
show on TV in their Huntington
Woods home.
His mom, who was the only
other person home at the time,
was not watching it. She’s not
a cook. She half-jokingly says
most of their meals come from a

take-out container. She guesses
that she may have been flipping
channels and left the room after
randomly stopping on the Food
Network Channel.
“Honestly, I didn’t know how
to control the television so I just
watched it,” recalls Vieder, who
obviously liked what he saw.
Years later, while many kids
his age were rattling off sports
statistics and discussing their
favorite players, young Vieder
was following some of his favor-
ite television chefs including
Bobby Flay, Anne Burrell and
Sandra Lee. “I watched the same
episodes over and over again,”
says Vieder, who comes from a
long line of non-cooks. The only
cook in his extended family was
his great-grandfather Sam (yes,
he happens to be named after
him) who owned a restaurant in