Meet Dasha Perez, a District Executive Chefs who works with our café and catering teams in the Washington D.C. area. Chef Dasha oversees nine of our DMV cafès. We hire meticulous, passionate people who are dedicated to creating the highest quality dishes and, of course, to meticulousness about food safety. When Dasha comes along, she helps elevate all of that, for the whole kitchen. She also spends time with each cafè’s chef and kitchen manager, bouncing ideas off one another about how to make their cafès better and better all the time. Dasha is also always planning with them for new developments like a seasonal menu, a new way of making a certain item, even a new ingredient their teams will soon learn about and be using.

In a nutshell, Chef Dasha is a mentor. She says, “My favorite part of the job is teaching. I truly enjoy spending time with team members, discussing what makes a particular ingredient special or exploring how to incorporate new techniques into recipes. It’s incredibly fulfilling to share knowledge and see our team members grow and develop.”

And, if you’ve ever wondered how we prepare our kitchens and bakeries for launches of new menu items, it’s district executive chefs who present all the new dishes and demonstrate exactly how to make them. “The way the team embraces new menu items is a perfect example of how they thrive on challenges and continuously push themselves to evolve. It’s not just about introducing new dishes; it’s about sparking curiosity, inspiring creativity, and fostering a sense of collaboration. These moments of education create an environment where everyone feels involved, connected, and invested in both the success of the menu and the overall mission of Tatte. This shared sense of purpose and passion is what makes the team truly exceptional,” she says. 

Dasha traces her love of cooking and the connections we make through food to her grandmother’s cookbook. She says, “I started by making simple recipes like brownies or French toast, but what really fascinated me were the handwritten notes about each recipe she’d left on the pages. My grandmother passed away before I was born, but reading her notes and recreating the same recipes she once made allowed me to feel connected to her in a way I never had before. From that point on, my connection with food grew naturally, and I found myself drawn to cooking as a means of connection—both to my family and to something bigger.” 

It probably isn’t surprising that Dasha’s first job was in a neighborhood restaurant in her native Denver. She was fourteen, working part-time first as a hostess. She stayed a few years, had a few other roles but most importantly, met a talented cake artist, the first of two early mentors who would help shape her career. Dasha says, “She took me under her wing, sharing recipes and teaching me the art of baking and cake decorating. Through that experience, my love for the culinary world grew even deeper. I soon realized that the traditional classroom environment wasn’t for me, and in my final years of high school, I enrolled in a culinary arts program through a vocational school where I found a mentor who helped shape the foundation of my successful culinary career.”

After high school, she joined a three-year apprenticeship program at a hotel in Denver where she spent time learning the ropes in all departments, from breakfast cookery and garde manger [making salads and overseeing the inventory and safety of ingredients that are kept cold ]  to banquets, desserts, and pastries. After completing the program, she worked as a line cook, a sous chef, then a culinary development chef for a hospitality group, where she developed recipes and created menus for their new concepts.

Dasha came to Tatte in 2020. Her first position was sous chef at West End, our first café in Washington D.C.. Next she became the head chef at our Dupont Circle café. About a year later, she joined the team that helps open new cafés, which meant training newly-hired kitchen teams. 

When Tatte created a second district executive chef position in the D.C. market, all that experience in our kitchen made her the perfect candidate.

Dasha’s expertise in so many facets of the food and beverage industry makes her excellent really good at her job and also, a natural at spotting potential in the people she works with. She says, “For me, it’s about finding chefs and cooks who are excited about more than just executing recipes—they should be driven by a desire to learn, grow, and be curious. I want my team to ask questions, challenge ideas, and inspire change in the kitchen. The best chefs think critically, experiment, and push the boundaries of what’s possible while maintaining a commitment to quality and integrity.” 

Dasha’s story continues, of course. There’s always new items to introduce to our kitchen teams, to help them execute perfectly long before our guests take their first bites. And there’s always newly-hired cooks experiencing those first thrilling moments of knowing that strangers love what they’ve made, just like Dasha with her own mentors when she was starting her career.

We are always looking for team members who are excited to take part in our mission—to bring more inspiration, caring, comfort and joy to the communities we are a part of.  Find our open opportunities on our careers page