As far as I know, this Greek style/Cincinnati chili (I’m not talking specifically about Skyline chili) does seem to have its genesis in Cincinnati from a Macedonian (although I’ve also read Bulgarian elsewhere) immigrant in 1922.
Well, we all know how these recipes are organic and have legs and aren’t even really original. It was an “idea” and an infuence of tastes within an ethnic enclave that spanned from New York, Detroit, Toledo, and Cincinatti. Many Greek families have fought over who has the “original and best chili”.
Of course. As someone who is really interested in food history, I’d be curious to see earlier accounts of this type of chili served elsewhere.
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If you just want to go with longevity as relates to origin, originality, or providence of Greek Chili-- Toledo has Rudy’s Chili and Hot Dogs (Coney Dogs) since 1920. Their Chili is two years older than Tom’s Empress, very similar flavors, but is IMHO much better than Skyline… never had empress chili but I bet it tastes a damn site near my Rudy’s and is probably a rip-off by a couple of years. Sorry Cincinnati… hate to let you down but Toledo has the better and original greek chili.
That is interesting indeed. The reason I ask is because a food forum I belong to had a thread years and years back about this, and it came up again a week ago. I’m going to have to dig a little more on Rudy’s here. I guess the question is, as a hot dog stand, did they serve Coney dogs since 1920?
Well, here’s a picture of the old menu board from Rudy’s in their main store… not sure its exact date. But it advertises Hot Dogs for a nickel and Homemade Chili. Whether the ‘hot dog’ had chilli on it as well, I am not sure. I do know that the Greek family that owns it has extremely long lived genes and they have been around a long, long, time and you could probably get a treasure trove of inside information about the History of Greek Chilli along the Detroit, Toledo, Cincinnatti corridor, and I’m sure with only minimal embellishment ;).
I guess the Coney Dog thing isn’t so much a requirement as much as the chili bit. If Rudy’s indeed was selling a Greek-style chili in 1920, flavored with cinnamon and/or cloves with chili powder, that does seem to change the historical narrative a little bit, as the claims seem to be that ground beef + cinnamon and/or cloves + chili powder was the Empress guy’s idea. So, is this something that is a point of controversy out there in Ohio?
Well, I don’t know about Ohio as a whole, but it is a bit of a controversy for me as I have posted a couple times in the last couple of months about it in the Coney Island thread and here, and was totally offended in the between time by Ruhlman’ and Bourdain’s representation with their recent heartland show that featured Skyline Chili… I’ve never seen it thrown out as a bone of contention, but it could be.
Obviously pin-pointing the genesis of foodstuffs like this is a bit difficult, often with various vendors offering competing claims as to who was the first. I just wonder why if Rudy’s has been selling the same type of product since two years prior to Empress, they haven’t challenged the claims of Empress or culinary historians. Maybe they just don’t care, but it’s an interesting question.
I dunno? Maybe partially because they don’t even have the oldest Coney Island style greek chili and dog in Toledo… that would be Coney Island Hot Dogs which opened in 1919. And Detroit might have some older. This is just a case of Cincinnati denying their Coney Island Heritage and influence… personally, I think the idea started in Detroit and migrated South.
Yeah, Detroit is actually the first city I think of when I think of Coney Island dogs, but I don’t know the exact chronology.
edit: I guess the question remains, though, did that place serve what is known as Coney dogs back in 1919, or did Empress come up with the idea and then it spread back to Toledo?
It’s pretty simple to date, you can practically see the wave of the greek chili trending south.
•First Coney Island opens in Detroit in 1917- Gust Keros’ American Coney Island and his brother’s store Lafayette Coney Island which opened next door after a fight between the two.
•Coney Island Hot Dog opens in 1919 in Toledo, followed closely by Rudy Poutredes’, Rudy’s Hot Dog in 1920.
• Empress Hot Dogs is opened in 1922 by Tom Kiradjieff in Cincinnati.
Cincinnati is well behind the curve here and their supposed special chili ain’t nothing but Coney Island sauce.
Yeah, I’m going to have to agree with you, here, assuming that all these places served that peculiar style of chili, and definitely at least as a direct refutation of this (in the article I linked to above):
Seems like the fact that a place called Coney Island Hot Dogs existed in 1917 in Detroit and seems to have been selling chili dogs since then absolutely refutes this claim.
So, to sum this all up, I guess that leaves us with Tom inventing Cincinnati chili via the “ways” he served them: on spaghetti, with options of cheese, onions, and beans. In that sense, Tom created Cincinnati chili, right? But the Greek-spiced chili stuff, or putting it on a hot dog, that’s nothing new.
I sense another War Between the States brewing here . . .
I propose to sell chili to both sides.
But I’ll leave out the beans, or else Texas will get into it too . . .
And on that other message board, we got Michigan’s first Coney down to 1914.
I think sichuan peppercorns are just butt nasty. Gah. Even thinking about them is disgusting. Maybe it’s like what 10% of the population think about cilantro. Stuff makes my mouth go numb, droll like an idiot and is simply foul. All that time I spent in Sichuan, where the peppercorns are in just about freaking everything, I lost sooooo much weight.
So, if you want to throw it into your chili, go wild. Just don’t try to slip any of that crap to me. 
I haven’t used enough to droll, and I used a teaspoon in a recipe that calls for a quarter teaspoon. Do you know how much was in the recipe?
Weird. I bite into one or two peppercorns and it causes my salivary glands to go into overdrive. Maybe it’s a case of YMMV.
I judged chili contests at two locations after winning the year before. I can tell you that Szechuan peppers would be the least egregious thing you could put in your chili. I was almost shocked at what people added to the mix, from spaghetti herbs to hotdog chunks to Italian sausage to mushrooms. In some cases, if it hadn’t been for the people watching, I would have spit some it out immediately. Even so, if it’s what lights up your taste buds, who am I to say nay?
Maybe I got some bad stuff. 