I’m a Bar Manager, and COVID-19 Has Permanently Altered My Sense of Taste

我记得我测试阳性后的最初几天COVID-19令人难以置信的很清楚：3月18日，我和我的女友正在做一个基于虾的hellofresh，只是……对我的味道并不特别好。在接下来的两天中，我发烧了，完全精疲力尽。两天后，纽约市的餐馆关闭。

我们决定在我家人在得克萨斯州的小湖之家度过一些不确定的时间。每个人都会记得如何纽约感觉就像是全世界最恐怖的地方。在向南行驶，fast food是州际公路上唯一的选择，每次我们停下来吃饭时，我都喜欢：“这味道不太正确。”我认为也许这只是感染生病的人，或者只是连续两天在路上16个小时的兴奋。

Flash-forward to a week and a half later, we were settled in at the lake and eating Whataburger, which is the best fast-food burger in the country—I'll fight anybody who says otherwise. I'm very familiar with these burgers, and yet, that burger tasted really odd. A week after that, I went for a Diet Coke, and it tasted almost like a cosmetic product would. There was a really unpleasant chemical quality to it, and, worst of all, that chemical was the only thing I could taste. Other than that, everything was just bland, bland, bland. I could still experience the basic tongue-affiliated sensations of acidic, sweet, and salty, but there was no nuance to anything. If you told me there was rosemary in a drink, I'd be like, "Sure, if you say so." It was so bizarre.

That went on for about two months, just out there at the lake. The first time I actually noticed some sense of smell coming back, there were these flowers that were growing outside the house that had this incredible stone-fruit smell to them, unlike anything I've ever smelled in my entire life. I brought my girlfriend over. I was like, "You've got to smell these. This is amazing." And she was like, "I don't smell at all what you're smelling." That's when I first kind of realized that not only was my sense of smell and taste coming back, but I was developing, like, a really poorly written superpower. I was starting to be able to smell and taste things that weren't there, and I was picking up flavors that others wouldn’t have agreed with.

有关的:您的服务器对寒冷的天气感到压力

As the bar manager at王冠害羞在纽约市的金融区，我改变的口味和气味显然会出现很多。每当我闻到柑橘的气味时（任何具有假或真正的柑橘质量的东西），它的气味就像极其氧化的柠檬汁一样。我必须经历这个心理过滤过程，以摄取我的大脑所识别的驱虫剂的东西，就像“那不是真的。不用担心。”

I’ve talked to other industry folks that temporarily lost their senses due to COVID, and they’re all obviously very excited to have them back, but I don't know that anyone was like, "Hey, but there's this weird thing in whiskey now that I smell. It's this weird thing in bananas that I smell." That part has been a solo discovery, and now that the restaurants are back open and we're having a little bit more time to talk to one another in a mask-to-mask setting, we've been exchanging information about our experiences more.

It’s a big bummer. My tasting notes have always been a little bizarre, but now, aged spirits taste like pineapple made of cardboard. There's something tropical to them, but also very dusty and a little bit like musty, which obviously affects my enjoyment of all of those things. Aged whiskeys and rums were some of my favorite things in the whole universe, and now it's like, "I can drink vodka."

现在我们进入我们的第一个菜单改变since COVID—the summer was less about creation and more about just getting drinks out the door in survival mode—I’m having to grapple with all of this more and more. I'm very fortunate in that we have built an extremely collaborative team around me. Now, I'll bring something to the table that tastes good for me, and someone on my team might say, "Honestly, that's terrible. Let's go in this direction." But, you know, they’ll do it more nicely. It’s huge.

A lot of my colleagues are drinks-focused, and not to say that isn't a huge deal for me, but I know that the thing that gets me up in the morning and that gets me fired up about this industry hasn't been taken from me. The tools by which I can influence those things have been tweaked a little bit. The thought that this is going to forever disadvantage or damage my career has occurred to me. But I'm not watering that particular plant just now—there’s enough madness in the world, you know?