Third Helpings

It seems like food writing, and food television shows for that matter, have become much more precious since this Calvin Trillin book was published in 1983. It was a simpler time before the Food Network, "foodies," and Yelp. Trillin's essays have that rare quality of being simultaneously ingenuous and worldly-wise witty. At a clambake, an "oyster eat" in Deleware, a Reading, Pa., barroom or a Hong Kong market, Trillin's eyes and ears are always open. As is, of course, his mouth.