Calvin Trillin, journalist and storyteller of the American scene, has introduced his readers to friends in unlikely places like Horse Cave, Kentucky, exposed several small-town scandals, and revealed a great many of his own idiosyncrasies along the way. Readers know a little bit about the way he thinks and a lot about the way he eats from the pages of his self-titled "tummy trilogy," American Fried (1974), Alice, Let's Eat (1978), and Third Helpings (1983). We've also met his family: his wife Alice, who "has a weird predilection for limiting our family to three meals a day," and his two daughters, Abigail and Sarah, the latter of whom "refused to enter a Chinese restaurant unless she was carrying a bagel in reserve…'just in case.'" (Alice, Let's Eat). Since many of these pieces originated as columns in the New Yorker and other magazines, Trillin's cast of...