Calvin Trillin sat in Biba, a Boylston Street restaurant whose decor is cheery southwestern United States, and, with a mixture of astonishment and equanimity, he contemplated a massive plate of chicken tandoori. ”It`s a lot,” he said, ”but I`m going to eat it anyway. That`s my policy.”
Trillin-a staff writer for the New Yorker and a syndicated newspaper columnist whose latest book is titled ”Enough`s Enough”-believes in taking his time both as a serious traveler and as a dedicated if unpretentious eater. In ”Travels with Alice,” another collection of his pieces published recently (Ticknor & Fields, $18.95), he described the delights of exploring French small towns with his wife, the Alice of the title, at an antlike pace. ”The guidebook we would have used for our day trips,” he said, ”would be called
`The Hanging Around Guide to France,` first in a series.”
The food Trillin likes best is expressive of its place and beloved by the people who live there. He is credited with almost single-handedly making a national institution of the late Arthur Bryant, barbecue king of Kansas City, Mo.-where Trillin was born. People should be chauvinistic about food, he believes. ”Anyone who won`t admit that the best hamburger is found in his home town is a liar.”
Chinese food his favorite
Of all the world`s cuisines, Trillin said, his favorite is Chinese. ”My last meal would be a Chinese one, but I`m happiest in Italy, particularly Tuscany. I have an unlimited tolerance for garlic and olive oil.”
His least-favorite national cuisine is British. ”The British lose interest in food at the moment it becomes time to eat it,” he said. In an essay entitled ”For Queen and Fritter,” he describes the Sunday buffet at a posh hotel in Barbados and concludes: ”If the sons of lieutenant colonels in the Coldstream Guards had bar mitzvahs, this is what the reception spread would look like.”
Trillin lives in New York, but has traveled widely-not only to France with Alice, but to Spain with eldest daughter Abigail and all over the United States with wife and both daughters-and owns a summer home in Nova Scotia, near Lunenburg. A lot of his traveling has been in the Caribbean, too much of it, he said, to ”former British colonies where the chefs seemed to have been looked after by Saint Nigel, the Anglican saint of gray meat and veggies.”
One of Trillin`s recurring fantasies is that instead of a British West Indies there was an Italian West Indies, ”The I.W.I. vacation spot I envision, a lush volcanic island whose steep hills are green with garlic plants, is called Santo Prosciutto.”
Divine intervention
American food is getting better, he said, largely because more non-Americans are cooking it. ”The great changes in American cuisine began with immigration reform in the 1950s,” he said. ”Before that, we were annually letting in 12 Greeks, 4 Italians and no Chinese-now there are 75,000 Greeks just in Astoria, N.Y.” Trillin said he regards the recent influx of Asians into American restaurant kitchens as a kind of divine intervention:
”God felt sorry for us because we lost a war to such a small country as Vietnam and sent the Vietnamese to us-where they were really needed.”
Trillin likes to walk a lot in any city he`s in, because walking usually provides surprises and ample opportunities to sample street food. ”I always tell visitors to New York to walk from Greenwich Village to Chinatown,”
Trillin said. When in Washington, his walks always take him at least once to the Vietnam Memorial. ”I also like to go to the Library of Congress and look at the photos taken for the Farm Bureau Administration during the Depression,” he said. ”They`re arranged by crops.”
The chicken tandoori demolished, Trillin took his leave. ”I`m going to the waterfront for dinner,” he said. ”I have some friends who know a good new seafood place.” –
