Reviews

When a writer takes great pains to tell you that this story is going to be different to all the other stories, not following the usual conventions or tropes, you’re wise to be a little suspicious.

After all, it’s hard to reinvent the wheel, and usually you’ll quickly find that so-called unique tale has all the same banalities that afflict most average works of literature.

So it was with some trepidation that I read a pronouncement along those lines in the second chapter of Cooking Dirty. And not surprisingly, the story that follows is not particularly revolutionary or groundbreaking. But it is well told; a lively narrative from an often-likeable narrator.

Jason Sheehan is these days a food writer for Seattle Weekly, imbuing his work with experiences picked up in kitchens often on the lower end of the culinary spectrum: dirty diners, filthy highway-bordering “crab shacks”, and pancake houses. Starting off as an awkward and clumsy teenager flooding the kitchen of his neighbourhood pizzeria, Sheehan went on to cross the United States as a cook for hire, taking on the aforementioned slum-room dining, but also occasionally breaking through to work as a chef in a fine dining French restaurant and for a private kitchen in a large corporation. Along the way, he relates the shambles of his personal life and addictions; his problems with emotions and relationships, and above all else, the sense of aimlessness and ennui that apparently infects many in his business.

His agenda for this book was to strip away what he saw as the antiseptic versions of kitchens seen on the Food Network, and the fake airs of celebrity chefs. He succeeds in this reasonably well; his kitchens are ones of chaos, his chefs often borderline psychos with drug addictions and self-destructive tendencies galore. But then, that’s not really a surprise; Anthony Bourdain (oft-mentioned within) did much the same a decade ago, and better. Still, Sheehan’s honesty and devil-may-care writing style make it quite the page turner, and a fascinating look into the kitchens of America.