St. Petersburg’s Chef Ted Dorsey dies

St. Petersburg chef and restaurant owner Ted Dorsey, 43, died Thursday. He had been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer in April.

In early August, Dorsey – known around town as Chef Ted – closed the Sunshine City Tavern, his “homage to 1990s St. Petersburg,” after his ongoing medical treatments left him too weak to work.

“This was my dream, my vision,” he told the Catalyst at the time, “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.”

Dorsey’s son and daughter, ages 8 and 11, lived with him five days a week. “Now my focus is, how long can I be around for my children?” he said.

A GoFundMe account opened by Dorsey’s sister raised more than $50,000.

“Ted was a great talent in the kitchen,” friend and fellow restauranteur Mario Farias said Thursday. “Always looking for the next great meal in there.

“But the thing I’ll always remember about Ted was, no matter how busy he was, or what kind of day he had, he would see me and this big grin would come across his face, like he knew he was keeping a secret. I just loved that part about him. And he’d give me a big bear hug.”

Born in Atlanta, Dorsey grew up in Clearwater and Tampa, the son of a longtime restaurant owner. He graduated from the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, which had a Hillsborough County campus.

“I was front of the house my whole life, so I didn’t really have any desire or passion to be a chef,” Dorsey said in a 2023 Catalyst interview. “I thought, go to culinary school, have a better understanding of the back of the house and how it functions, and costs, how it works and how to make money … but not to be a chef.

“At that point, I guess I wanted to follow in my parents’ footsteps and be an entrepreneur. I figured I needed to know all aspects of the business.”

To his surprise, he loved cooking and planning menus. After making his reputation in Hillsborough restaurants including Ciro’s Speakeasy & Supper Club, Boca Kitchen Bar & Market and Copperfish, he became executive chef at Castile, the restaurant inside St. Pete Beach’s Hotel Zamora.

Between 2015 and 2023, Dorsey was co-owner and executive chef at the popular downtown St. Pete eatery The Mill. He spent six months running the kitchen at The Club on Treasure Island; venue owner Bill Edwards then named Dorsey executive chef at Sonata, the fine dining restaurant inside the Edwards-managed Mahaffey Theater.

He resigned in 2024 to open (with business partner Teddy Skiadotis) Sunshine City Tavern.

“I think the lightbulb moment is when you have the first taste of success in any business,” he said. “Obviously that’s different for everybody – Derek Jeter’s lightbulb moment was when he was 12! Mine just came much later in life.”