Empress Chili, Alexandria, Kentucky

If you’re in Cincinnati for a Roadfood crawl, you have to have chili, specifically Cincinnati chili, seasoned with cinnamon and spaghetti. The Rules of Roadfood eliminated chains, but I’d had Skyline before and I was eager to try some local spots. The first, appropriately, was Empress Chili.

Tom and John Kiradjieff, Macedonian immigrants, founded Empress in 1922, and the Empress website credits them with inventing Cincinnati-style chili. Originally Empress was next to the Empress Theater, a vaudeville venue in downtown Cincinnati. That site is now Library Square, and Empress Chili occupies a simple brick building at 7934 Alexandria Pike, across the Ohio River in Alexandria, Kentucky.

I ordered a regular (not a large) three-way, that is, chili with spaghetti and cheese for a ridiculously low $5.18 (plus a 40% lower than here tax.) I really wanted a four-way, but I saw “beans” and didn’t notice “or onions.” I always like onions. Here it is —

I enjoyed the chili. The first thing I noticed was, of course, that it had lots of cinnamon, as did the Skyline I’d had. I asked Skyline Chili expert David Sanders how Empress differed from Skyline and he pointed to the lesser thickness of the spaghetti and returned to his large serving. Empress also is less overwhelmed by cheese, more balanced in that regard than Skyline.

I should note that I grew up eating chili or hot tamales just about every Sunday night. My father was raised beside the Mississippi where the Delta hot tamales are an oddly placed specialty. Indeed, as a lad of 16 he won a hot tamale eating contest by downing 36. Second place went to a man who managed 23. That’s all to say that my chili preferences veer toward chili powder and cumin rather than cinnamon, but I enjoyed the Empress version quite a bit. Although it wasn’t my usual chili, it tasted very good. I did add a touch of Frank’s, but then adding hot sauce is brain stem activity for me. That happens when you grow up eating tamales.

Empress also offers salads and cold cut sandwiches and, more to the point, coney dogs. I would have ordered one if I hadn’t faced a half dozen more eating stops, and probably should have ordered one to share. I was still feeling my way through the Roadfood crawl protocols. Meanwhile, it was good food and great company. If you want to try some Cincinnati chili, definitely go to Empress and have the original. And a coney dog.

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