Calvin Trillin comes home for the Kansas City debut of his play — and for the food

Around these parts, Calvin Trillin is best known as a guy who writes about eating.

The son of a Kansas City grocer and restaurant owner and a graduate of the now-closed Southwest High School, Trillin in the 1970s and 1980s spread the gospel of several classic local restaurants — Arthur Bryant’s, Stroud’s, Winsteads — through his writings in national magazines and bestselling books.

But in the wider world, Trillin, 86, is many things to many people: a humor columnist, a political poet, a longtime reporter for The New Yorker.

It’s his work as a memoirist that brings Trillin back to his hometown this week. In 2006, Trillin published “About Alice,” a loving portrait of his marriage to Alice Stewart Trillin, an author and educational television producer who died of heart failure on Sept. 11, 2001.

“About Alice” was eventually adapted into a play of the same name, which made its world premiere in Brooklyn in 2019. The show makes its Kansas City debut Wednesday through a production by Kansas City Actors Theatre.

Trillin spoke to The Star last week from New York, where he’d just returned after a stay at his summer home in Nova Scotia. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Q: In another memoir of yours, “Messages From My Father,” you wrote that Alice sometimes referred to you doing your “Kansas City Act.” Can you talk a little about what that entails?

A: I think it was a little bit of her teasing me about living in New York City but doing a routine that my father would often do, which is a kind of, “Aw shucks, we didn’t have that in Kansas City.” The way country people talk about city people, like, “I’m just an old so-and-so from Oklahoma.” There’s a line in one of my books where I write that I told our daughters, “Despite all evidence to the contrary, you are being raised in Kansas City.” It wasn’t exactly an act. I really imagined a white picket fence around our house in (Greenwich Village).

Where exactly in Kansas City did you grow up?

Starting in first grade, we were at 601 W. 70th Terrace. Right on the corner there. It was one of the last houses built before the war, when you couldn’t build anything. I lived there until college. And then sometime in college my parents sold it and moved out to Overland Park. But then many years later, maybe 30 years later, my nephew bought that same house. So when I went back for my 25th high school reunion, me and Alice, we were able to sleep in my old room.

When you think of your childhood in Kansas City, what do you see in your mind?

I often say I’m reluctant to admit this in New York, but I had a happy childhood. When I think of it, a lot of my early childhood was dominated by the Second World War. I was 5 when it started and 10 when it ended. But I actually enjoyed high school. It was very MGM normal, like a school in the movies. Southwest wasn’t beautiful or wonderfully equipped or had the best teachers in the world, but it seemed like what high school was supposed to be.

When was the last time you were in Kansas City?

It’s been at least three or four years — definitely before the pandemic. Normally over the years, I’ve made it every year or two, particularly when my mom was still alive. And also sometimes someone would have a convention in Kansas City and they say, “Who’s that guy who’s always talking about Kansas City, we’ll get him as a speaker.”

Do you still eat at the same old places you’ve written about over the years? Bryant’s, Strouds, etc.?

When I can get someone to go with me, I do. The Stroud’s I knew is gone — the one out south (near 85th Street and Troost Avenue). And I switched my custom from Bryant’s to LC’s some time back. Although, is LC’s closed, or did something happen with them?

The owner died last year, but it’s still open. You were kind of a populist food writer before Anthony Bourdain and others made that fashionable. Do people ever give you credit for that?

I’m not sure I deserve any credit. Anthony Bourdain actually knew a lot about food. I wrote about food as a way of writing about the country and telling jokes. I was always interested more in the vernacular of food, I guess you’d call it. I was interested in the way eating affected people in a certain area. I was never a proper food writer. I never reviewed a restaurant or ever even claimed to know much about it. But it can be hard to convince people you don’t know much about something, I’ve learned.

It’s been about 15 years since you published “About Alice.” It seemed to really resonate with readers. Did that surprise you?

I was surprised. Partly because I thought of the book as being about Alice, like the title says. But people seemed to take it as a book about marriage and other things. I don’t reject that idea, but it wasn’t my intention. I went on a television show after it came out and the interviewer said, “What was it like to have people write about how you were in touch with your feminine side?” And all I could really think was, “I hope the guys I went to high school with didn’t read that.”

So, yeah, I was surprised that people saw in our marriage things in their own. Because you don’t really know anything about what really goes on in other people’s marriages. You only know your own.

You adapted the play yourself.

Yes. What happened was, the book came out, and Jeffrey Horowitz at the Theatre for a New Audience came to me and said, “This has to be a play.” That started a long and sometimes miserable process that took several years. The thing about the theater is that it’s not like being a reporter where it’s just you and your notebook. There are a lot of other people and considerations. But finally it opened in New York.

And now Kansas City.

Yes, and we’re sort of using (the show) as an excuse to have a mini family reunion in Kansas City. My sister will be there, and both my daughters are coming. My nephews are also there, and another nephew is coming in. This is secondhand information from my daughter, but I’ve been told that my sister will be taking us straight from the Kansas City airport to Winstead’s. Though I also feel like I heard something about Winstead’s. Is it doing OK?

They’ve closed several locations, but the Plaza one is still around.

OK — that’s the only one that really matters to me.

Calvin Trillin’s ‘About Alice’

Kansas City Actors Theatre’s production of “About Alice” starts at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 17 at the City Stage in Union Station and runs through Aug. 28. (Aug. 20, the official opening night, is sold out.) Tickets ($20-$47) and information are available at kcactors.org.