The Tummy Trilogy: American Fried/Alice, Let’s Eat/Third Helpings

In the 1970s, Calvin Trillin informed us that the most glorious food in an American city was not to be found at the pretentious rooftop restaurant he called La Maison de la Casa House, Continental Cuisine. With three hilarious books, he established himself as “our funniest food writer” and, in Craig Claiborne’s phrase, “the Walt Whitman of American eats.” Now the three books have been combined in what Trillin calls The Tummy Trilogy.