Cape High culinary instructor is a self-proclaimed gastronaut

LaTisha Dismuke knows her way around a kitchen.

“Some people eat to live. I live to eat,” said Dismuke, a culinary arts teacher at Cape Henlopen High School.

Known to her students as Chef T, she became a teacher only three years ago, having spent the previous 20 years in banking. Cooking, though, has always been her greatest passion, serving as a creative outlet and form of therapy. 

“It’s one place I can go where I feel in control of my outcomes for the most part,” she said. “But it has also taught me to be adaptable, and to be able to adjust when things don't go the way you planned.”

It all began when her grandmother taught her to cook as a little girl.

“We had a big family, so it wasn't just making a small pot of something,” Dismuke said. “Figuring out how to stretch it for 15 to 20 people was a lot, but I saw her part in it and her passion for it, and that's where it started for me.”

From there, any time she could be in a kitchen with someone, she was.

Her father was in the military, so her family moved around a lot, and she tried new foods everywhere they went. Determined to learn each new dish, she started studying the Food Network.

“That’s where I say I went to culinary school,” she joked. “Literally, it was running all day and all night.”

When she’d go to her friends’ houses, if their parents were in the kitchen cooking and it smelled good, she’d go into the kitchen and ask them what they were making and how.

She calls herself a gastronaut, which she describes as someone who will travel solely for culinary experiences.

“When I travel, I make a point to connect with true industry chefs or even just home chefs that are amazing cooks, and get authentic recipes [and] authentic ingredients from the places I go,” she said.

So far, outside the U.S., she’s been to Jamaica, Dubai and Antigua, and her next stop is Puerto Rico. 

In 2015, which she was working full-time at Capital One, she launched her catering business, A Taste of Jazz.

“It was supposed to be a little side gig, but it became far bigger than that,” she said.

Over the years, she’s expanded the brand and refined her reputation. She offers private chef services, catering, meal prep services and live entertainment, both as a solo saxophonist and comedian.

During COVID, she received a severance package from Capital One.

“I looked at it like God was giving me a parachute to try something different,” she said. 

Interested in teaching and already having three college degrees in business, she initially considered becoming an adjunct business professor at a university.

Then one day while she was catering an event, a woman approached her and asked if she’d ever considered teaching high school culinary arts, saying she’d been watching her work and thought she’d be great at the job. The woman was on the Seaford school board, which at the time was looking for a culinary arts teacher. 

Dismuke applied for the job on a Tuesday and was hired by that Thursday. She spent a year at Seaford before moving to Cape High, where she’s been ever since.

“My favorite part is seeing how the students light up with pride from something they’ve created [and] seeing them open up to the possibilities of their own abilities,” she said. “I really feel like that’s a transferrable skill, no matter where you go, to take pride in your work.

“When they create something, they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, Chef T, I really did it. Can I take a picture and show my mom? Can I go show my teacher? Can I go show my friends?’” she said with a smile. “So not only do they have a sense of pride, but then they spread that joy and that pride.”

She always reminds them they can do whatever they set their mind to, as long as they keep working until they get it.

Making her classroom welcoming and engaging is her No. 1 goal, she said. 

When it nears the end of the marking period and the students are stressed with exams, she likes to turn on some music and have the students do karaoke or a silly line dance to ease their emotions before going into the kitchen.

“I like to say your passion gets translated into the plate, be it good or bad, whatever the emotion is,” she laughed. “A mad chef has never made me a good plate of food. A happy chef has.”

Despite being only a few years into her teaching career, she received the 2025 Delaware Restaurant Association’s Educator of Excellence Award.

When she got the call that she won, she couldn’t believe her ears. Later that day, when she processed the news, she learned that one of her students, a rising junior named Caleb Marcus, had nominated her.

“I feel like in this crazy world, kids need a safe space,” Dismuke said, her eyes welling with tears. “When I saw his letter, just talking about it makes me emotional, because those were his words: ‘Her classroom is a safe space.’” 

“It was truly an honor for me to receive that so early in this career pathway, and I attribute it to the kids,” she continued. “To be received by the students and industry leaders of that magnitude was overwhelmingly reassuring that I’m on the right path.”