The history of Cincinnati chili is - like many of the best things in American culture - an immigrant story. I'll be over here eating my Skyline Chili three-way (I'll explain) with an oyster cracker and hot sauce chaser. I specify "Greater Cincinnati area" because I'm technically from across the Ohio River in Northern Kentucky, but in my defense, so is the Cincinnati Airport, and you can take it up with them. ( Deadspin notoriously called it "the worst regional foodstuff in America or anywhere else" and "abominable garbage-gravy." ) But to those of us who grew up in the Greater Cincinnati area, this stuff is mother's milk - Mama's Cookies, even it's a Cincinnati thing, look it up - and it's the pride of the Queen City, alongside Graeter's ice cream, goetta, and LaRosa's pizza. But that's no justification for the torrent of bile Cincinnati chili receives from those unaccustomed to its pleasures. We can agree that sauce-like clove-nutmeg-cinnamon-and-god-knows-what-else-infused Cincinnati chili bears little resemblance to the bean-studded or beef-chunked stews that other regions of this great land might recognize as chili. Skyline Chili is a perfect food and I will tolerate no slander of it.
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