July 28, 2025

Food Publicist Finds Way Back To Flavor After Reconstructive Mouth Surgery

For Chloe Crane, eating and drinking is the job — but life-saving procedures forced her to relearn how to taste.

One of the best perks of working adjacent to the hospitality business is the opportunity to taste an astounding gamut of flavors the world has to offer. The industry is first and foremost about community, but then it’s about connection to flavor, the brands and experiences that make people happy through the rituals of drinking and eating. A food and drink publicist’s job is to communicate these connections through the language of food and drink. 

So what happens if the ability to taste has to be surgically removed? 

For Chloe Mata Crane, partner at Baltz & Co, in 2022 that nightmare scenario became reality after receiving the horrific news that she had a malignant salivary gland (essentially cancer of the mouth), and that a portion of the roof of her mouth — where we have the secondary sensors that contribute to tasting the flavors we detect on the tongue — would have to be removed and reconstructed. It meant at least six months of not being able to eat the foods she loved or taste most new ones, never mind also having to completely avoid participating in the convivial joy of wine and cocktails. Even if she otherwise felt physically OK — and hungry! — she had to abstain from most consumable things. 

Cancer is scary enough. But the idea of having to live through it without being able to eat almost all comfort food during treatment is horrific to contemplate, even if the situation is promised to be temporary. It’s even worse when it's your job to eat, drink, and, through all of it, be merry. 

How does one cope? What are the options? Does anything feel like it’s worth eating in that situation? And what has it been like to live with a rebuilt taste receptor? 

Crane has generously agreed to share her story, here are excerpts of our interview, which was conducted in Carroll Park just after a yummy (for both of us!) late breakfast at Salt’s Cure. 

The Schudown: I’m so sorry this happened. How did you find out? Were there symptoms? 

Chloe Mata Crane: I went to see my dentist after the pandemic. Like most of us, I hadn't seen any [non-emergency] doctors. The hygienist when she was cleaning noticed this spot at the top of my mouth and kind of had this alarmed look in her face right away, said, “you really need to have this looked at.” 

I would have brushed it off, but she looked so startled that I didn't. When it was biopsied, it quickly was diagnosed as a cancerous salivary gland tumor that was caught early, but it needed to be removed. And then everything went on hyperspeed, multiple doctors trying to figure out what to do. 

TS: What was the treatment? 

CC: Doctors advised to be as aggressive as possible so it wouldn’t recur. I had to have surgery to carve out this top part of my palate and get basically all the way to the bone to eradicate it entirely. It requires multiple doctors. There's the one who takes it out. There's the one who reconstructs it. It's like a relay process. I was really lucky in a way. I did not have to do chemotherapy. It was a big surgery and then a big healing process.

TS: Did they have to remove teeth or just the upper palate?

CC: They just had to remove the upper palate and take skin from the inside of my cheek to rebuild the top of my mouth. 

TS: WOW. 

CC: So it was two areas of reconstruction: the top inside of my mouth and the inside of my cheek. 

TS: How long was the recovery and can you talk a little about the progression? 

CC: I did not really think or listen or hear about the length of recovery. Cause I think if I had, I would have really freaked myself out to the point where I would have been way too in my head. 

But I could not swallow, even my own spit for at least a month. 

TS: Why is that? 

CC: The inside of your mouth is just in shock. And so the simple acts of swallowing or talking, I was just like both healing and scared at the same time. I didn't actually talk for several weeks.

It wasn't until I went to the doctor for a three week post that I whispered something about not being able to speak, and asked him when I could speak. And he said, no, you can, and I was floored because I thought I really couldn't. 

TS: Because you were afraid to bring your tongue to the top of your mouth? 

CC: I was afraid to really move anything in my mouth because it felt so traumatized. And it was a really interesting learning time.

My son had speech apraxia when he was young. And so his sister was always speaking for him. We were always hyper aware of speaking issues in his babyhood and youth. And so he instantly clicked into knowing how to talk to somebody who's not really talking! That was amazing. So at first it was showing a text and writing things down and kind of whispering a little bit. It was oddly like a forced silent retreat, a lot of gesturing. 

TS: Could you eat anything at all after those first couple of weeks, once the shock was subsiding a bit? 

CC: I probably had just like brodo and soups, really thin soups for like three to four months.

TS: Did heat irritate you? 

CC: The heat did bother me. I would have a very lukewarm, very mild liquid. I still don't really like hot drinks as much anymore unless it's really cold out and it's not a very hot drink. Now that the inside of my mouth is fully healed, it still feels like a new part of my own body. Like I can't even imagine what it’s like for women who've had breast reconstruction or people who have different parts that have been lost. Reintroducing even this tiny part of the inside of my mouth feels like it's almost not mine. 

I touch it with the top of my tongue all the time and it's like, who is this?

TS: So how long was it before you could eat regular food?

CC: Probably about five to six months. My whole life was about food. It was a real realignment to not have my day revolve around food — or joy of socializing over food — any of the things that I was used to.

TS: Well, I was just about to ask that. You were well enough to be in society, but you couldn't participate in the way you were used to, meeting people to specifically eat and drink. 

CC: It was very different being at restaurants and not eating. And at most, I would eat a lot of garnishes. I would eat sour cream off of nachos. I would eat the hummus not the pita — I got to a point where I could eat purées. And so I got good at ordering things that were basically versions of purées, or gazpacho, and just ate that part of the food. But I liked it! 

It was interesting to kind of dial back and watch how much other people eat — how kind of mindlessly we eat in general and to rediscover your own appreciation for fullness, all those things. It was surprising.

TS: How did you navigate it with your job?

CC: I certainly went out less or would just eat less with people and only go to share plate venues. If you were paying attention, you'd realize that I really wasn't eating that much.

TS:  I guess in a way it parallels the Ozempic treatment, how people on it talk about appetite suppression, not wanting much when they eat out, even when it’s a social situation and food they normally love. 

CC: And I think I never would have related to that idea before, but now I understand it. I see when people eat very differently at a table or when people are taking menu items into real consideration. It also makes me think a lot about the drinking culture too. And you know, when you are trying not to drink, how you kind of quietly do so, you know, without other people noticing, because you don't want other people to feel uncomfortable about their eating or drinking just because maybe you're not.

TS: Did you have to explain it or you were just like, “I'm just not having very much.”

CC: “I'm only going to have this plate of hummus.” I would preface it a bit by saying that my mouth is still healing just so they knew.

TS: From an unspecified oral surgery. 

CC: I did not use the C word. I did not use the “cancer” word at all in my life to anyone basically other than in the doctor's offices until over a year later.

I did not feel comfortable saying it. My mom had sent me a book in the mail and I hid it in the back of the closet and I was like, no, thank you. I do not relate to you. I am not part of your tribe.

Like, get out of here! I can't handle you. Maybe because I didn't have chemotherapy and different things that I knew other people had to go through, I felt like I didn't have the ownership to have a relationship with it. So I felt like, well, I could have had it worse in those ways.

TS: But it was a lot. That’s a lot to go through! 

CC: I've come around a bit on that because it does feel very healing to talk about it.

I did have this extraordinary opportunity that a doctor had connected me to a patient who had experienced my procedure a couple months before me. And so it was that couple of steps ahead of me. 

Nothing was more helpful than speaking to this stranger who I never met, who I never talked on the phone to, who I'd never seen in person. I have no idea what she looks like. I only know from emails. We would send each other texts and emails with questions that I would have, and discuss the fear. It was like having a very anonymous and very important sherpa take me through that.

TS: What was going through your mind when you first got the diagnosis? Was there anything you wanted to eat before you knew you couldn't eat for a long time?

CC: I think one of the final meals before the surgery was a giant amount of nachos because I was aware that I wasn't going to have crispy things. And Bolognese. 

I still remember the first food that somebody made me that wasn't mail order broth or a smoothie —  chawan mushi, savory Japanese egg custard. My friend made that at their home for me, and it was like eating for the first time. Or like when I remember feeding my kids food for the first time.

It was the first time it didn’t feel like just a nutrient that I need. It was so flavorful and so delicious. I never really appreciated its texture in the same way before — the silkiness of it. I felt so alive eating that.

I feel like I remembered more coming back to food than leaving it.

TS: Well, that was going to be my next question. How did you find your way back to tasting the things you loved? Were you worried about how the reconstructed part of your mouth was going to taste things again? 

CC: The thing that’s stuck with me the most is that I don’t appreciate wine in the same way. Particularly red wine. I still have a great appreciation for anything with effervescence, like a Cava, Prosecco, Champagne or beer. I became a big fan of beer. I never in my life would have ordered a beer ever out at a restaurant or paid attention to beer on a menu at all.

Now I'd rather have a beer than anything else. But red wine, sadly, something about the tannic quality just doesn't taste as good to me. 

TS: What about food? 

CC: Besides anything that’s particularly hot [in temperature] I am more sensitive to the amount of chewing time that food takes, not because I can't, but I’m just paying more attention, like with steak. I remember José [Andrés] says this a lot about meat and why vegetables are sexy is that with meat, sometimes you're just chewing and chewing and chewing and it gets boring to just chew. But a beautiful fruit? It’s gone. 

The other food that I've always liked, but I like even more now is sea urchin. Because like chawan mushi, it’s the blast of flavor without the distraction of texture. It’s been revelatory — the fact that you can have pure flavor without having to chew through it constantly. I appreciate those things a lot more. 

TS: Do you have any advice for people who face the kind of challenge you went through? 

CC: I definitely am so grateful for that person who I still don't know who just shared their own experience so candidly with me. I would say finding other people who have gone through something… I think this is true for so many things in life. There is always someone out there who has been through something that you are dealing with that feels very lonely or scared. If you find those people to connect with, you are always going to find your strength. 

TS: That’s amazing. Thank you for sharing all this experience. Thank you, Chloe.