“Cooking Dirty — A Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 355 pages, $26).

Jason Sheehan is a food writer for a Denver newspaper. He knows his cooking, having labored as a cook in 30 some restaurants before becoming a writer.

“Cooking Dirty — A Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen” is his memoir about life in those kitchens. He got his start in the business as a dishwasher at a pizza place in his hometown of Rochester, N.Y., when he was still in high school.

That’s where he caught the cooking bug. He spent the next dozen years working his way up the ladder to become a full-fledged chef. It was a slippery slope. He kept sliding back down.

“Cooking Dirty” is a no-holds barred, profane and hilarious account of a passion for food and cooking that almost killed the author. He describes working 16-hour shifts in kitchens that were infernos. Temperatures would rise to 140 degrees. Cooks would collapse, then be hauled outside to recover while another one jumped into their vacated spot on the line. 

The author worked in an all-night diner. At midnight the orders would come pouring in. The kitchen crew would fill hundreds of orders over the course of a few hours. They made it through each night fueled by adrenaline, hard rock music, coffee, beer, cigarettes and marijuana.

These tales read like war stories. Each night was the same battle with new casualties. Sheehan explains: “It was the pressure that did it. The grind: same menu, night after night after night. It was the proximity — four or six or 10 men jammed into a space not much larger than a prison cell, baking in the heat, listening to the incessant clacking of the ticket printer.”

Burned out in Buffalo, Sheehan fled to Florida where “on the day we arrived it was 170 degrees with 900 per cent humidity.” He needed a job. He got one at Jimmy’s Crab Shack. His humor here is as finely honed as the expensive knives he carries with him to each new job.

At Jimmy’s “no one seemed to care that the daily special never changed. This was likely because Jimmy’s Crab Shack had never in its long history seen a repeat customer. And no one ever complained, because anyone smart enough to know good food from bad would’ve taken one look” at the decor and “run for their lives.”

Sheehan descends into his culinary underworld with morbid good cheer. He reflects that “it was an act, sure. But what job isn’t? Just on the other side of the swinging doors there would be bedlam, fire, blood and harsh language; 20 guys who, in another life, were maybe the guys who’d stolen your car or your credit-card numbers, who worked two jobs or three jobs under two or three different names to keep their own families fed...”

For an industry that employs millions  “Cooking Dirty” pays loving tribute to what really goes on behind those “swinging doors.”

Contact book reviewer Vick Mickunas at vick@vickmickunas.com