5:40 p.m., the kitchen. Chef is standing over Hasta at the saucier station, tasting and gently but firmly giving instructions for slight modifications. Next to him, Kirk jiggles a pan of vegetables over a low flame. On the back burner, extra pans are stacked 12 high, always hot and ready to be grabbed. Andrew, normally the saucier, is working the plating station tonight; it’s his job to coordinate what lands on every dish, in every bowl. He calls for vegetables, meat, sauce; the appropriate cooks appear with the required elements. Once the dish is assembled, Andrew wipes away errant drops of sauce, stray garnishes, imperfections. Every plate that leaves this kitchen must look flawless; if it doesn’t, it’s not for lack of trying.

Salad orders are already sliding out of a small printer at the cold station. A colander falls from a shelf, knocking over a jar of mayonnaise. In a split second, the spill is wiped away, a handful of salt shaken over the slippery spot. A Saturday night in a busy restaurant kitchen is something akin to a choreographed but chaotic dance: full of frenetic energy, movement, and near-misses.

Ernie is the official expeditor tonight, which means it’s his job to call out the orders as they emerge from the overworked printer: "Lamb, medium rare." "Ordering a bass and a snapper." "Fire ostrich!" Food runners Andres, Sashu, and Jamie — perhaps the hardest-working of the Mantra bunch, ascending and descending the restaurant’s stairs what seems like a thousand times over the course of the night — appear breathlessly outside the kitchen window, grab ready plates off shelves, and disappear back up to the dining room. When kindly Andres stops to talk to me, Ernie points an accusing finger at him, then toward a waiting dish. "C’mon!" he bellows. "Do you see this?"

7 p.m., the kitchen. Lali, still at his tandoor-oven post, looks glum. Given the heat emanating from his corner of the room, I can’t blame him. I am struck by the noise level down here; at most workplaces, employees pass the time with banter, jokes, gossip. Here, there is little idle chat; in fact, the loosely obeyed rule is that only four people — Chef, Ernie, Andrew, and sous-chef Paul — are allowed to speak. The theory behind such a hard line, I can only imagine, is that if you add any more voices to the mix, orders are bound to get screwed up, even lost, in the aural confusion.

A plate of seared veal tenderloin comes back to the kitchen, apparently not cooked to the customer’s liking. "Can I get a little more, please?" Ernie asks, handing the plate over for additional firing. At the veggie station, Kirk starts to pull a pan off the flame. "No," Chef interrupts. "It’s not hot yet." Over in the dessert area, Sandri — the only woman working in the room tonight, which is not unusual for a restaurant kitchen — reaches into a freezer and pulls out pre-formed little balls of sorbet that she drops into glasses; on command, she speeds them to the cold station, where they’re picked up and taken to be served to diners as a cleansing pre-entrŽe.

The printer is momentarily silent, giving Ernie time for a little mid-rush humor. "My wife’s home tonight. I fixed the bed," he announces to whomever’s listening. "I haven’t cleaned the house, but I fixed the bed."

"I’m jealous," replies Andrew, who, like most of the people in this kitchen, works six nights a week. "I haven’t even talked to a woman in three months. This is the first woman I’ve talked to." He turns to me and shakes his head soberly. "You think I’m kidding."

8:20 p.m., downstairs hallway. I am half-collapsed on a bench outside the kitchen, trying to stop sweating. My feet throb. My back aches. My hair — we won’t even get into that. I am clearly not cut out for the restaurant business. In fact, with this assignment, I briefly doubt whether I’m even cut out for journalism.

Jamie, the eldest food runner (who can’t be much younger than my grandmother), appears beside me, looking as energetic and decidedly unsweaty as he was at the beginning of the night — despite the fact that he’s been running up and down the stairs for nearly three hours. He asks if I’d like a drink from the bar. "Water," I tell him gratefully. "When you have a chance. No rush." Jamie smiles. "I have a chance," he says cheerfully, and bounds back up the stairs. What kind of superhero shoes do they wear, I wonder, that keep them from sacking out beside me on this bench?

Minutes later, Chef wanders out of the kitchen, stands beside me, and stretches. Although I wouldn’t wish my current state of what I’ve decided to call Kitchen Ache on anyone, I’m secretly pleased — or at least relieved — to see someone else exhibiting signs of fatigue. But Chef, perhaps spurred on by the escalating noise emanating from the dining room, recovers quickly and returns to the kitchen.

I remain, for the time being, on my bench. From this vantage point, I can see both the flurry in the kitchen and the other, distinctly different activities that take place down here. The frighteningly thin, frighteningly beautiful women who trip tipsily down the steps in pairs, heading for the bathroom. The suited-up men, cigars in hand, ambling toward the downstairs bar. The singles clutching cell phones, searching for a quiet spot from which to coordinate plans for a late-night rendezvous. None of those who hurry down these stairs seems to notice the kitchen just to the left. No one seems to wonder what goes on in there. No one even looks. It’s as though the kitchen doesn’t exist; as though all that beautiful food appears magically on one’s plate soon after it’s been ordered from some faceless, unknown place.

9:05 p.m., the kitchen. My brief rest over, I’ve returned to the hot zone. There are 12 order tickets hanging at the plating station. One of them has not come from the printer; handwritten by Chef, it’s the menu he’s chosen for Table 42 — the Food & Wine people. Important guests are often rewarded with a special tasting menu, dreamed up on the spot — and often prepared — by Chef himself.

"It’s crunch time, baby," says Andrew, posting another ticket. Chef tastes a spoonful of soup from a waiting bowl and thinks, then allows it to be sent up to the dining room. Ernie notices a food runner stacking plates on his arm. "Don’t destroy the food!" he admonishes. "Don’t ever let me see you do that again." Ernie shakes his head wearily as the runner leaves with the plates now properly splayed. "How dare he?"

Chef continues his tasting tour, now musing about a spoonful of sauce scooped directly from the pan. He asks Hasta to add more salt, then turns the flame up and whisks the sauce himself. When he’s satisfied, he turns his attention to Lali, still hovering over the tandoor oven, still looking grim. Chef pulls a batch of prawns out of a nearby drawer and hands them to Lali, who slides them onto a giant skewer, upon which they’ll be roasted, tandoor-style, for an off-the-menu special. When they’re ready, Paul hands them off to Andrew for plating, with instructions to send them "to 64, compliments of the chef." Over at the cold station, Dalbir checks his watch.

10:15 p.m., the kitchen. Andrew flips the reservation list to its final page. "Last leg," he remarks, to no one in particular. I’m loitering by the dessert station, reveling in the smell of chocolate. After spending hours surrounded by cooking meat and sizzling garlic, I’m utterly intoxicated by the aromas of Mantra’s sweets. Visually, the desserts are just as dizzying: cardamom-brioche bread pudding with red-currant sorbet; pistachio kulfi with candied kumquats and apricot-sage coulis; saffron-poached pear with blue-cheese ice cream and cranberry compote. A spoon, I think. A spoon would be nice.

A short time later, outside the kitchen, Chef sits down for the first time all night. He pulls out a cell phone and makes a brief call before he’s needed once again, this time by a member of the waitstaff who has a question about a dish. From upstairs, the voices grow increasingly louder, the laughter more frequent. The dining room has loosened up appropriately for a Saturday night.

Back in the kitchen, as 11 o’clock nears, the cooks are beginning to clean their stations. At the plating area, Andrew’s work is winding down. "I’m excited," he says, though his flat tone suggests exhaustion more than anything else. "It’s Saturday night. That means tomorrow is a non-Mantra day."

"Our only non-Mantra day," adds Ernie.

Lali brings a giant bread board to Jose, Profitio, and Miguel at the dishwashing station. Sashu, whose food-running frenzy has quieted, dunks his head under a faucet. I’m surprised he doesn’t climb into the sink.

11:10 p.m., the kitchen. To get the full experience, Ernie tells me, I must join the chefs for a drink. Though a few cooks will remain in the kitchen — the abbreviated bar menu is served until 1 a.m. — for the most part, the night’s work is done. I join Chef, Ernie, and Andrew in a crowded corner of the upstairs bar. Why they haven’t staggered from the building at the first opportunity, I can’t fathom. At this point, there’s no place I’d rather be than home in bed. But if they’re still standing, I’m bucking up and standing, too. I order a gin and tonic.

12:35 a.m., second car on an outbound Green Line train. My head is swimming. When the train stops at Boylston, I can barely muster the energy to let a kid in nightclub apparel squeeze past me out of his seat. I’ve never had a burning desire to work in the restaurant industry, nor any delusions that I could. But in the midst of my hazy, Mantra-induced delirium, I am surprised at just how grueling, just how hot, just how exhausting the restaurant-kitchen experience is.

And I’m not the only one. In the seat in front of me, kindly food runner Andres leans his head against the window of the train as it whizzes beneath the streets of Boston. He is asleep.

Tamara Wieder, who has only recently recovered from her night in Mantra’s kitchen, can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com