Life's Pleasures Quote by Calvin Trillin

Trillin turns a complaint about bland food into a small, vicious X-ray of class anxiety. The line pretends to be about seasoning, but it’s really about social boundaries: the “tasteless” menu isn’t a culinary failure so much as a defensive architecture. Spices and garlic stand in for immigrants, working-class diners, ethnic neighborhoods, anyone whose presence might puncture the illusion of refined sameness. The joke lands because it exposes how “good taste” often functions as a coded language for “people like us.”

The phrasing matters. “Such places” is deliberately hazy, the kind of euphemism used to avoid naming private clubs, country clubs, or upscale dining rooms where exclusivity is the product. “Members associate” hints at institutional consensus: this isn’t one snob’s palate, it’s a culture enforced by membership, rules, and quiet agreement. That’s why the punchline cuts: the group polices flavor the way it polices access.

Trillin’s journalism has long treated food as a reporting tool, a way to map power and belonging without the self-seriousness of straight political critique. Here, the subtext is that xenophobia and status maintenance don’t always show up as slurs or explicit policies. Sometimes they’re expressed as a preference for “plain,” “clean,” “simple” food - aesthetic alibis that keep the “wrong” people and their smells, languages, and pleasures at a safe distance. The humor isn’t gentle; it’s surgical, because it suggests the blandness is the point.