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Trillin declared Arthur Bryant's, a plain Kansas City barbecue joint, the single best restaurant in the world, citing its burnt ends, piled-high brisket sandwiches on white bread, and cafeteria-like setting. The claim is deliberately provocative. It locates culinary excellence in a Black-owned, working-class smokehouse rather than in the elite dining rooms that critics usually rank.
'La Maison de la Casa House, Continental Cuisine' is Trillin's generic name for the pretentious restaurant that borrows foreign-sounding names, French menu terms and elaborate service to signal sophistication. The mash-up of languages in the name mocks how such places sell status through borrowed prestige rather than cooking. Diners pay mainly to feel cosmopolitan.
When a traveler asks a civic-minded local where to eat, the answer is usually the town's showpiece Continental restaurant. The local is embarrassed by the barbecue stand, chili parlor or crawfish shack that actually makes the place distinctive. Finding the good food therefore means ignoring what residents recommend to impress outsiders and seeking out where they eat when nobody is watching.
Trillin travelled to Buffalo to investigate who invented the chicken wing. He recorded the Anchor Bar's account, credited to Teressa Bellissimo, alongside a rival claim from John Young, who served wings in 'mambo sauce.' He treated a bar snack's contested genesis with the seriousness usually reserved for historical scholarship. The joke doubles as an argument that vernacular food has a history worth documenting.
Trillin evaluates food by the appetite and delight of the ordinary eater, and he treats elite gastronomic authority as something to puncture with comedy. His wife Alice, who counsels moderation and sensible portions, serves as his comic foil. Seen this way, the populist eater's gluttonous enthusiasm is a legitimate critical standard, and the food establishment's refinement becomes a class marker rather than a measure of quality.