Cincinnati Chili: Refugee Food That Became Civic Identity

Atanas Kiradjieff and his brother Ivan arrived in Cincinnati in nineteen twenty-one. They had fled Aegean Macedonia, a region that had become a killing ground through the Balkan Wars and their aftermath, where ethnic and national violence had driven hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. They came to Cincinnati for the same reason most immigrants came: because someone they knew was already there.

In nineteen twenty-two, the brothers opened a small restaurant next to the Empress Burlesque Theater. They called it Empress Chili. What they served was a meat sauce built on the flavor principles of Macedonian cooking: beef, not lamb, but seasoned with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, and tomato in a combination that no American diner had encountered before. They served it over spaghetti, because that was available and cheap. Regulars began ordering it with toppings: kidney beans, shredded cheddar, onions. A system of ways developed, from two-way to five-way, that still structures every Cincinnati chili order today.

Empress grew into the largest chili parlor chain in Cincinnati. In nineteen forty-nine, a former Empress employee, a Greek immigrant named Nicholas Lambrinides, opened his own place on a hill with a view of downtown and called it Skyline Chili. Skyline eventually surpassed Empress.

What the Kiradjieff brothers had made was not Texas chili and not Macedonian stew. It was something new, invented in Cincinnati by people who had survived a war, adapted from memory, and adjusted to what was available. The city adopted it entirely. Cincinnati chili is now one of the most reliably divisive regional foods in America, which is its own kind of success.