Jason Sheehan

• Before becoming a food writer, Jason spent ten years as a chef working in professional kitchens in New York, Florida, and New Mexico.
• He has a lifelong love of diners, corner bars, and neighborhood joints, and sees the development of candy, snacks and comfort food as saying more about the culinary history of a place than its fine dining scene ever will.
• He published a memoir about his time in the industry called "Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen", which was named one of the 10 best nonfiction books of the year by TIME magazine.

Experience

Jason's career in food began when he was 15 years old, working at a local pizza shop in his hometown of Rochester, New York. He fell in love with the heat and the pressure of working in kitchens, and the joy of making beautiful things under less-than-perfect conditions. For years, he chased this thrill across the country, working everywhere from diners to hotel restaurants, fine dining kitchens to cooking the night shift at a Waffle House on Route 66. Now a James Beard and IACP award-winning journalist and critic, he has written about food, chefs, farmers, and the culture of professional kitchens for publications such as Salon, Secret Menu, Oxford American, NPR, and Philadelphia Magazine.