The 24-year-old left George Washington University to work in professional kitchens. She now bakes to order in New York and started a weeknight recipe series in September.
Talula Fyfe Dempsey is the eldest child of Patrick Dempsey, the Grey’s Anatomy actor, and the makeup artist Jillian Dempsey. She is 24 and works as a pastry chef in New York, where she runs a small business called Talula’s Kitchen. In February she walked the red carpet with her father at the Baftas in London.
Last month she started a weeknight recipe series on Instagram and her Substack newsletter. It opened on 21 September with lemon salmon, asparagus and potatoes cooked on one tray. The second episode, posted on 2 October, was crispy corn quesadillas, which she wrote are for nights “when cooking feels like a little too much”.
The series is called Quick & DirTEE, and the capitals point to a family nickname. Her father wrote “My little Tee all grown up” on Instagram for her 19th birthday in 2021, and her newsletter goes by Spill the Tee.
| Quick facts | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Talula Fyfe Dempsey |
| Born | 20 February 2002 (age 24) |
| Parents | Patrick Dempsey and Jillian Dempsey (née Fink), both 60 |
| Siblings | Twin brothers Darby and Sullivan, 19 |
| Education | George Washington University, 2020 to 2022 (left before graduating); Le Cordon Bleu Paris and London |
| Business | Talula’s Kitchen, founded October 2023 |
| Based in | New York City |
Table of Contents
Why Talula didn’t follow her father into acting
As a child she visited her father on the set of Enchanted, and he told Redbook in 2007 that afterwards she kept asking him, “When is the princess coming back?”
She told Millennium Magazine in 2025 that her family never pushed her towards the industry, although people she isn’t close to assumed she would become an actress. “Acting is truly a skillset I don’t possess,” she said, pointing to her one-line part as Reporter 2 in a school play. She would like her own cooking show one day, she added, but not a scripted one, because she would never remember the lines.
Her younger brother Sullivan is the one who wants to act. He is studying at New York University and the Stella Adler Studio, Hello! reported in June.
Leaving college for the kitchen
She was eight, she told the food site Beyondish, when her grandmother gave her a cupcake kit. She made cupcakes every day for 12 days, until the supplies ran out.
From 2019, when she was 17, she worked as an intern assistant at her mother’s beauty company, FYFE Beauty, according to her LinkedIn profile. The job involved sending PR boxes to the press and running the catering on its video shoots.
She enrolled at George Washington University in Washington DC in August 2020, studying psychological and brain sciences and entrepreneurship.
After her second year she applied “on a whim”, with no culinary training, for a summer pastry course at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. She earned a basic pastry certificate there in July and August 2022, and later told Beyondish that Paris was more stressful than her course in London the following year.
One more term at GWU followed, and she left in December 2022. Speaking to ShoutoutLA, she said she wanted full-time, hands-on experience and called “leaving college in my junior year” one of the biggest risks she has taken. Not everyone understood the decision, she said, and she faced a lot of criticism for it.
“Looking back, it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”
Talula Dempsey to ShoutoutLA, July 2025
Six months at Gucci Osteria
Two months later she joined the pastry team at the Michelin-starred Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, which closed in November 2025. She worked there as a pastry cook until July, and her LinkedIn profile lists choux pastry, desserts, ice cream and sauces among her specialities.
The kitchen showed her how much each component of a dish matters, she told Beyondish, and taught her mise en place: having everything organised before she starts to bake.
A business run from home
The idea for her own business came to her while she was jet-lagged in Italy, she told Beyondish, just before she started an intensive pastry course at Le Cordon Bleu London in August 2023. Talula’s Kitchen began that October as a home-based bakery in Los Angeles, catering desserts for parties and making gift boxes. Red velvet mini cakes, brioche cinnamon swirl cake and flourless chocolate cake were among its popular orders.
When she opened orders to the public in July 2024, her father announced the launch on Instagram. Parade reported at the time that her website described the business as “a one-woman show” that could not always fill every request.
Her chocolate chip cookie mix grew out of a problem with her recipe. Friends in other states kept asking for it, she told ShoutoutLA, then said their cookies never tasted like hers, which she put down to the ingredients. The mix she released in spring 2025, with nationwide shipping, uses the same semisweet chocolate and sugars she bakes with, she told Los Angeles Magazine. She has called it the work she is proudest of.
In April 2025 she handed out free cookies with every scoop at a pop-up at Wanderlust Creamery in Venice, California, and went on KTLA’s morning news to talk about it. Her father appeared in one of her TikTok videos that month, baking with the mix. They had not made cookies together since she was little, and he admitted on camera, “I never liked chocolate chip cookies until you started making them.”
Production of the mix was paused when she went back to London to study, according to her website.
Plant-based training in London
In summer 2025 she returned to Le Cordon Bleu London for its plant-based diplomas, pâtisserie first and then cuisine, and kept a weekly diary of the classes on Substack until she finished in December. Her website links the courses to a growing interest in sustainability and wellness, and to a belief that food can be “both indulgent and nourishing”.
Her Le Cordon Bleu courses
| Course | Campus | When |
|---|---|---|
| Basic Pastry Certificate | Paris | July to August 2022 |
| Intensive Pastry Certificate | London | August to September 2023 |
| Diploma in Plant-Based Culinary Arts, Pâtisserie | London | Summer 2025 |
| Diploma in Plant-Based Culinary Arts, Cuisine | London | Autumn 2025 |
That autumn she was back at George Washington University, less than three years after leaving, as a guest speaker on how start-ups can use AI. She spoke in the class of business professor Jungho Suh, whose New Venture Initiation course she had taken in 2022, and later joined his final session of the term by video from London. Suh has written on LinkedIn that she will be a case study in his forthcoming textbook, New Venture Creation: Evidence-Based Entrepreneurship in the Age of AI.
Moving to New York
By January 2026 she was in New York, writing on Substack about the city’s restaurants and grocery stores. Talula’s Kitchen has no shop there. Customers order by direct message or email, and her order page says everything is handmade by her in the city.
Her father told Parade in January that it is “dangerous when she’s home because she’s always experimenting”, and that he eats far too many of her sweet treats, InStyle reported.
On 21 February, the day after her 24th birthday, she joined both parents at the Charles Finch and Chanel pre-Bafta party in London. The next night she walked the Bafta red carpet with her father, who was one of the evening’s presenters. InStyle’s coverage described her as having recently opened a Los Angeles patisserie, though by then she was working from New York.
Where to find her work
- @talulaskitchen on Instagram, for Quick & DirTEE episodes, recipes and New York orders
- @taluladempsey on Instagram, her personal account
- Spill the Tee, her Substack newsletter, at talulaskitchen.substack.com
- @talulafyfedempsey on TikTok
- talulaskitchen.com, for recipes and order enquiries
