Audioguides Cincinnati

Cincinnati is an Ohio River city that spent the 19th century growing richer than it had any right to, on pork processing, soap manufacturing, and the flood of German immigrants who poured in after the 1848 revolutions. They built Over-the-Rhine, the neighborhood just north of downtown, in the image of the cities they had left: streets lined with Italianate brick buildings, lager breweries at every corner, civic halls built to last centuries. Over-the-Rhine stalled out in the late 20th century and then came back in the 2000s with a force that surprised everyone, its breweries re-opened and its storefronts colonized by restaurants and galleries while the bones of the 1870s architecture remained unchanged.

The Cincinnati chili question requires explanation.

It is not Texas chili. It arrived with a Greek immigrant named Athanas Kiradjieff in 1922 and contains cinnamon, chocolate, allspice, and Worcestershire sauce in its meat sauce, which is ladled over spaghetti rather than eaten from a bowl. A three-way adds cheddar. A four-way adds onions. A five-way adds beans. Skyline and Gold Star are the competing chains; locals have firm opinions. Hating it means nothing because locals do not care what you think about their chili.