Cooking Dirty: Life, Love and Death in the Kitchen

(Paperback, Main)

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From his first job scraping trays at a pizzeria at the age of fifteen, Jason Sheehan has worked at all kinds of restaurants across America, from Buffalo to Tampa to Albuquerque: at a French colonial and an all-night diner, at a crab shack just off the interstate and a fusion restaurant in a former hair salon. In Cooking Dirty he tells the story of one man's addiction to the urgency, stress, and adrenalin of minimum-wage kitchen work. His universe becomes 'a small, steel box filled with knives and meat and fire', where the kitchen is a fraternity with its own rites and initiations: cigarettes in the walk-in freezer, sex in the basement, drugs everywhere.

Restaurant cooking sets a series of seemingly endless personal challenges, from the first perfectly done mussel to the satisfaction of surgically sliced foie gras. The kitchen itself is a place in which life's mysteries are thawed, sliced, broiled, barbecued, and fried - a place where people from the margins find their community and their calling.

Cooking Dirty is a passionate, funny, electrifying memoir of addiction: an addiction to kitchen work. It reveals the hell and glory of restaurant life, as told by a survivor. Jason Sheehan is his own unforgettable central character - edgy, driven, irresistible. Eating out will never be the same again.

Reviews

"If chefs are the new rock stars, Jason Sheehan is like a grunge guitarist of the old school." --John Freeman, NPR

"Funny, entertaining, and provocative." --Corby Kummer, " The Atlantic" Food Channel "The best of [the new chef memoirs] by a mile . . . by a former chef of no particular distinction named Jason Sheehan, now an extraordinarily good food writer . . . "Cooking Dirty" is his account of a career spent largely at what he calls 'the low end of the culinary world': late-night shifts at diners, bars and neighborhood joints. Some of it is pure drudgery--like prepping a 'literal ton of corned-beef briskets' at an Irish pub the week before St. Patrick's Day--but when the orders start pouring in, the pace and chaos and heat in even a low-end kitchen somehow fuse into a kind of mass lunatic joy. 'I am God of the box, ' he writes, 'the brain-damaged Lord Commander of a kingdom of fifty feet by five and made entirely of stainless steel, industrial tile, knives, sweat and fire.' "--"Time" "'Cooking Dirty, ' a broad, prickly, affecting memoir chronicling his recollections of his first 30-odd years . . . Young and ambitious and in full voice, Sheehan no doubt has many adventures ahead to gather for his next memoir (or three). I'd expect them." --Tucker Shaw, "Denver"" Post"
"For food critic Sheehan, who spent almost 20 years on the restaurant kitchen front lines, cooking is war. His rough, tough, and riveting culinary biography details the scars he earned in his journey through life and gives readers a true taste of a real cook's working world." --"Library Journal" (Best Book of 2009 selection)

If chefs are the new rock stars, Jason Sheehan is like a grunge guitarist of the old school. John Freeman, NPR

Funny, entertaining, and provocative. Corby Kummer, " The Atlantic" Food ChannelThe best of [the new chef memoirs] by a mile . . . by a former chef of no particular distinction named Jason Sheehan, now an extraordinarily good food writer . . . "Cooking Dirty" is his account of a career spent largely at what he calls 'the low end of the culinary world': late-night shifts at diners, bars and neighborhood joints. Some of it is pure drudgerylike prepping a literal ton of corned-beef briskets at an Irish pub the week before St. Patricks Daybut when the orders start pouring in, the pace and chaos and heat in even a low-end kitchen somehow fuse into a kind of mass lunatic joy. I am God of the box, he writes, the brain-damaged Lord Commander of a kingdom of

Author Bio

Jason Sheehan won a James Beard Award - America's top food awards - in 2003. His work has appeared in Best American Food Writing every year for the past five years. This is his first book.