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Chef Ted Dorsey is in the fight of his life
As he undergoes treatment for cancer, the veteran St. Pete restauranteur is forced to close his Sunshine City Tavern.
When last fall’s twin hurricanes all but ruined the St. Petersburg house Ted Dorsey shared with his two young children, the veteran chef and restauranteur wondered why bad things sometimes happen to good people.
That wasn’t the half of it.
In April, just a month after Dorsey and his business partner Teddy Skiadotis opened Sunshine City Tavern on 4th Street North, he was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer.
“It came out of nowhere,” the 42-year-old Dorsey said. “I had a clean bill of health. I was doing twice a year with my primary care physician. All of a sudden you go in for a stomachache, and you come out Stage 4.”
After just four months, Sunshine City Tavern officially closed Tuesday afternoon.
“It got to the point where it’s too much, and I can’t run day-to-day operations of the restaurant AND battle cancer,” Dorsey – affectionately known as “Chef Ted” – explained. “I’m almost doing my staff a disservice by continuing to operate, and not being in a hundred percent. I’m not even at 50 percent.”
He’s been hospitalized on eight separate occasions. “It’s been hard. I’ve been in the hospital for 46 days between April 20 and now.”
Dorsey’s chemotherapy begins Aug. 12; it was postponed several times because of issues with the duct stents.
He wears a drainage bag connected to a tube in his abdomen, and therefore can only sleep on his back. And he has had hiccups for seven consecutive days and nights. “It sucks, dude,” Dorsey said.
Chemo will, of course, bring nausea, pain and fatigue.
His thoughts are centered on his kids, Jackson (age 11) and Samantha (8). They are children of divorce, and live with their dad five days a week.
Dorsey’s sister has been established a GoFundMe page to help the family with expenses; it’s at this link.
“I took one paycheck since I opened the tavern,” Dorsey explained. “The kids and I are struggling. We’re having a hard time making ends meet. So anyone who can donate, I would be eternally grateful.”
A graduate of Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, Dorsey, who grew up in Clearwater and Tampa, has an illustrious bay area CV. After making his reputation in Hillsborough County, he became executive chef at Castile, the restaurant inside St. Pete Beach’s Hotel Zamora.
He was co-owner and executive chef at The Mill, in downtown St. Petersburg, between 2015 and 2023. After half a year running the kitchen at Bill Edwards’ Club on Treasure Island, he was named executive chef at Sonata, the fine dining restaurant inside the Edwards-operated Mahaffey Theater, before resigning in 2024 to open his “homage to 1990s St. Petersburg,” Sunshine City Tavern, with Skiadotis.
Closing it, Dorsey admitted, was a tough call. But what choice did he have?
“Teddy’s got too much on his plate to run it. This was my dream, my vision, and it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, one of the hardest choice I’ve ever had to make, to shut it down. Because my legacy was to leave this to my children. That clearly isn’t going to happen now. And now my focus is, how long can I be around for my children?”
With his mind swimming through a thousand thoughts at once, Dorsey is facing whatever the future has in store with stoicism and bravery. “I’m a fighter,” he swears; he’s on a regimen of prescribed medications, and he plans to establish a YouTube channel to “document the journey for all to see.”
Getting the restaurant sorted out – “I wanted everybody to know I did everything I could to make it happen” – has been paramount.
“My sole focus is to make sure everybody is left whole. I can get my vendors paid, I can get Teddy paid, I can get the landlord paid, cool. We’re done, I’m out of here scot-free.”
