Tampa Bay chefs, culinary students and industry sponsors will fill the Tampa Bob Buckhorn River Center on Friday for a $150-a-plate dinner built around a single mission: keeping the region's next generation of cooks in school. The Signature Chef Dinner, known as A Taste to Remember, runs from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the downtown Tampa venue along the Hillsborough River, according to the VooDoo Chef Foundation.
The evening brings together chefs, industry partners, educators, students and the community for chef-inspired tastings, signature libations, music and entertainment, as detailed by Tampa Bay 28. Tickets are available through siganturechefdinner.com, and the outlet describes the dinner as an annual celebration of food, community and the future of the culinary industry. This year's presenting sponsors are Bradenton-based breakfast chain First Watch and artisan bakery brand EuroBake USA, according to the VooDoo Chef Foundation.
A Foundation Built by a Longtime Teacher
The nonprofit behind the dinner was founded in 2017 by Chef Erik Youngs, a Certified Executive Chef who has spent nearly 30 years teaching in Hillsborough County Public Schools and more than 40 years in the hospitality industry, according to the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce. Youngs created the foundation to help local youth pursue culinary careers, giving him a dual identity as both a public-school educator and a working chef. Since its founding, the foundation has awarded more than $100,000 in culinary scholarships to local high school seniors and culinary students, while also feeding over 3,000 families annually through its community hunger initiatives, per the foundation.
Those scholarships flow directly to students attending the Hillsborough Culinary Academies at Erwin Technical College, a postsecondary vocational school run by Hillsborough County Public Schools, the chamber's report notes. The district itself is the seventh-largest public school system in the country, a scale that leaves it leaning on community foundations like VooDoo Chef to expand specialized career-training tracks, per background from the foundation's own materials.
A Televised Stage for Student Cooks
The foundation also produces VooDoo Underground, a competitive culinary television series that premiered its fourth season on RHStv in July, with high school student teams competing for full college tuition culinary scholarships. The show is filmed on location at Erwin Technical College by Red House Streaming, according to the same St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce report. It gives the foundation's student cooks a televised platform beyond the dinner circuit, feeding the same scholarship pipeline that Friday's event helps fund.
A Taste to Remember is not the foundation's only fundraiser. The group also runs the VooDoo Burger Bash competition in Ybor City, which draws chef competitors from across Florida, and the VooDoo Chef Charity Golf Tournament at The Eagles Golf Club in Odessa, according to the foundation's events page. Together, the events form a year-round slate of fundraising across Tampa Bay that supports the same scholarship and hunger-relief work highlighted in the foundation's public materials. Donations can also be made directly through voodoocheffoundation.com, as Tampa Bay 28 notes.
Why the Timing Matters for Florida Kitchens
The push to train job-ready culinary graduates comes as Florida's hospitality sector faces both opportunity and rising costs. The industry generates $111.7 billion in economic output and supports 1.5 million jobs statewide, according to the Florida Restaurant Show. At the same time, the state's minimum wage is climbing under Florida Constitutional Amendment 2, reaching $14.00 per hour in September 2025 before stepping up to $15.00 per hour in September 2026, per the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association.
Those rising labor costs are heightening demand among Tampa Bay restaurant operators for job-ready, certified entry-level staff, according to the association's analysis. It is against that backdrop that Friday's dinner positions itself as more than a tasting event, framed by organizers as a celebration of food, community and the future of the culinary industry that feeds directly into the workforce pipeline serving Florida's restaurants.
