3 Fights Ohio’s Cincinnati Chili Has Picked With Texas, Toledo, and Deadspin

Announce that you put chili on spaghetti, and some Americans will have opinions before you finish the sentence.

Ohioans have stood up for Cincinnati chili more than once, and the arguments have come from some unexpected places.

Here’s who the dish has been up against.

1. Deadspin

Deadspin writer Albert Burneko ranked Cincinnati chili last among 52 foods representing U.S. states in October 2013, according to LINK nky.

Cincinnati Magazine reports the list placed Cincinnati chili, which stood for all of Ohio, just below getting hit by a car.

Burneko’s post was titled “The Great American Menu.”

The story spread.

Deadspin’s post racked up almost a million page views, the magazine says, and drew outraged tweets, defensive TV news reports and wounded blog posts.

Deadspin’s follow-up on October 22, 2013, rounded up the local TV coverage in a post whose headline begins with Chili Slander.

If you watched Cincinnati TV that week, you could see the dish defended.

Fox19 wondered whether something had upset the writer, then thanked him for the laugh.

In a sixth-anniversary look back, CityBeat said Cincinnati media had a field day defending the chili, and described the coverage as free advertising for Skyline and Gold Star.

If you grew up eating Cincinnati chili, that list is a hard read.

2. Texas

In 1974, Cincinnati chili went up against Texas chili at a National Press Club cook-off in Washington.

Cincinnati Magazine says the club’s president at the time, Clyde LaMotte, was a Texan who also led the Chili Appreciation Society International.

Earlier that year, Ohio Sen. Robert Taft Jr. took the Senate floor on February 7, 1974 to speak up for Cincinnati’s version.

Dallas Morning News columnist Frank X. Tolbert wrote that Taft’s remarks caused more than 9,000 words to be printed in the Congressional Record.

Sen. John Tower’s Texas chili won the popular vote at the cook-off.

If you’re keeping score, Cincinnati’s entry, which arrived by limousine, didn’t win.

Fox19 reports that attendees liked the Cincinnati entry but questioned whether it qualified as chili.

If you’ve ever defended your bowl to a Texan, you’ve heard that objection.

Fifth Third and Comerica staff disagreed over chili again after Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank bought Texas-based Comerica in 2026, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

A Comerica employee asked Fifth Third CEO Tim Spence whether he liked chili with or without beans at his first Houston town hall, according to Wall Street Journal reporting the Enquirer cited.

Spence declined to answer.

Comerica’s former chief executive, Curt Farmer, now a Fifth Third vice chair, says Texans wouldn’t consider a dish of ground beef, beans and tomatoes chili.

Cincinnati chili is soupier than the hearty, beefy chili known in Texas.

3. Toledo

When you order Cincinnati chili, does the cheese go over the chili or under it?

A Reddit post about Ideal Hotdog, a Toledo restaurant with two locations, started that argument in June 2022, according to Cincinnati station WCPO.

Ideal Hotdog calls its dish chili mac.

Hundreds of comments followed, along with dozens of memes.

Cincinnati-style chili is spaghetti with chili and a hefty pile of cheddar on top, a stack Skyline Chili’s menu calls a 3-Way.

Toledo-style chili goes on last, over the spaghetti, onions or beans and cheese.

Commenters defending Cincinnati chili said it looks better on the plate.

Commenters from Toledo went after the cinnamon in Cincinnati’s recipe.

The Cincinnati side answered that you can’t even taste it.

Both sides had a point.

Some commenters found common ground, WCPO says: Toledo-style chili is simply an inverted three-way.

If you’ve only ever ordered it one way, the other way looks backward.

An inverted three-way is something you can order at practically any Cincinnati chili eatery.

Food writer Robert Simonson described Ideal Hotdog’s chili mac in a November 2025 newsletter as half mild chili, half spicy.

Chili and the Revised Code

If you're looking for an Ohio law that names Cincinnati chili, a September 2026 CityBeat piece says there isn't one.

The headline calls Cincinnati chili an iconic Ohio food that isn't official.

If you open Chapter 5 of the Ohio Revised Code, which lists the state's official symbols, you won't find a section for a state dish.

The chapter does name a state bird, a state frog, a state gem stone and a state song, among other symbols.

Texas went the other way, and a Texas House resolution notes that chili was declared the official state dish of Texas.

The list counted a dish as legally protected only if a trademark, certification or marketing order restricts who can use its name.

By that measure, twenty states can point to an official food, whether through statute or legal enforcement, and the rest have nothing officially tied to their food.

Cincinnati chili has no state law backing it up and is purely a cultural fondness, though CityBeat adds that may be what makes it so well known.

A Chicago Reporter's Chili Tour

A Chicago Tribune food reporter toured Cincinnati chili parlors in 2018 and came away a convert, according to CityBeat.

Nick Kindelsperger visited five parlors: Skyline Chili, Gold Star Chili, Price Hill Chili, Camp Washington Chili and Dixie Chili, which first opened in Newport, Kentucky.

He described the meat sauce as closer to a Bolognese than to a chunky chili.

He also concluded that Cincinnati makes a convincing case that no city in the country is as wild about chili.

That's high praise.

If the jokes are what you know, his take gives you another view.

A column from Cincinnati station WCPO says he opened by telling readers braced for a slam to relax.

His piece joins the praise of other writers who have championed the dish, including Cincinnati-bred New York food writer Keith Pandolfi and the late Anthony Bourdain.

If you want to try his picks, they're Dixie Chili, Camp Washington Chili and Price Hill Chili.