The Weekly Eater Nadine Kam

DAVID SWANN / DSWANN@STARBULLETIN.COM

Nuances of taste retreat
when illness clogs the nose

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In many ways, newspeople can identify with mail carriers. We're both charged with delivering the word of the day. Only the vehicle differs.

Some of us still feel that -- rain, snow, traffic and pitbulls be damned -- few adversities would keep us from our jobs. Reporters can be coughing up parts of spleen or a broken heart, suggesting they've been thrashed by disease or by their beloved, but they know better than try to use those sorry excuses on editors. They know the rule: "Uh, sure, you're dying, sorry man, but you had a deadline."

I haven't gotten sick much since the summer of 1993, when I discovered the secret of staying well in pre-SARS Hong Kong. That is, never touch public surfaces without a paper towel or other disposable barrier. I learned the hard way after becoming extremely ill by touching railings and doors dampened by the human ooze permeating the air. There, the rule of shopping is "no fitting," which translates as, "Don't you dare try to squeeze your sweaty, sticky body into these clothes."

But there's no stopping bugs in the air. I got sick again at the 2000 Foo Fighters concert where bodies dripping assorted fluids were pressed together and a stream of liquid goo spewed onto my arm as I was making my way through the crowd. This time around I was felled by open-mouth hacking in the newsroom. Why have these people not watched "Outbreak" and learned its lesson?

For two years I have watched Japanese tourists walking around with bandannas over their mouths like new-wave banditas and thought of it as merely one more Japanese schoolgirl trend. I guess they were on to something.

AFTER 11 DAYS of illness, I realized there was no way I could write a review, having lost my olfactory sensitivities.

For a while, I considered trusting someone else's opinions. "What does this taste like?" I'd ask friends, only to get nervous replies like, "I don't know," "You're not going to quote me, are you?" and "You're trusting me?"

It was all too dangerous. Besides, the idea of hanging out in restaurants loses a lot of appeal when you're sick.

One day I had a craving for tom yum and headed to Champa Thai, where I ordered red curry and mahimahi with green peppercorns instead. I could taste nothing but salt.

The thing is, I hadn't lost my sense of taste, the ability to discern and respond to flavors sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. The human will to live being what it is, our brains are hardwired to detect astringent or bitter poisons even in our most feeble state.

But I had lost some of that will to live, throwing out my anti-inflammatory, cell-invigorating diet and reinstituting the sugary substances I had discarded a week earlier. With my body temperature up, I realized I was one big walking inflammation, my body killing off millions of cells on its own. So I helped, chugging down orange, cranberry and apple juices by the quart. Sugar water. I didn't care. I didn't even bother washing my hands before eating. What was the point?

WHAT I missed were the nuances of taste that enter your brain through your sense of smell. I was therefore immune to the joy-inducing scent of fresh strawberries entering the market, as well as the charcoal grill-perfumed rib eye and kalbi at Gyu-Kaku.

I had to eat for sustenance, but I was missing so much that really, I should have tried to live simply on beans, cottage cheese and chicken soup.

I tried to live vicariously through my boyfriend's sense of taste. When a friend delivered a batch of basil, I made bruschetta.

"Can you taste the basil?" I asked anxiously.

"Of course, can't you?"

"No."

"How's the tomato?"

"Good."

"Can you taste the garlic?"

"Yeah."

"OK."

After a few days, some flavors started slipping through, like the ginger on miso pork at Bamboo. If you're feeling ill and want a treat, by the way, I found that the ability to sense dark, bitter chocolate -- the best kind -- never goes away. It was the only thing that tasted normal.

Unfortunately, the horrible smells also broke through first: a pile of garbage, the restroom at Restaurant Row, auto exhaust, the trail of a woman's cheap perfume. Ex-smokers understand this phenomenon.

I'm not completely well yet, but a lone mango is waiting for the day my sinuses clear.

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See some past restaurant reviews in the
Columnists section.

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Nadine Kam's restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Bulletin. Star ratings are based on comparisons of similar restaurants:

	excellent;
	very good, exceeds expectations;
	average;
	below average.

To recommend a restaurant, write: The Weekly Eater, P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, Hawaii 96802. Or send e-mail to nkam@starbulletin.com