Owner Fadi Khalilieh — whose family owned the now-shuttered JK’s Chili in Madeira, Ohio — took the family recipe and started a food truck in 2013, before finding a brick-and-mortar home in early 2022. The Chili Hut puts some innovative spins on classic chili parlor fare, like the Eden Pork, a cheese coney made with a spicy mettwurst sausage in a nod to Cincinnati’s German heritage, topped with chili, cheese, and coleslaw; or the Walking Taco, made with corn chips topped with chili, lettuce, tomato, onions, cheese, sour cream, and jalapenos.

While the city center may be saturated with chili parlors, Blue Ash Chili caters to the city’s northern suburbs. Their chili packs less heat than other restaurants, but patrons can amp it up with a unique take on the six-way, which includes the addition of fried jalapeno caps. Blue Ash Chili also offers chili lasagna: flour and corn tortillas layered with chili, sour cream, and shredded cheddar. For the truly bold, the No Freakin’ Way Challenge awards a free meal and T-shirt to anyone who can finish a combined 5 pounds of chili and spaghetti topped by another 2 pounds of cheese and 1 pound of jalapenos.

Pleasant Ridge has seen an influx of hip restaurants serving dry-aged beef and slices of floppy New York-style pizza, a cocktail bar themed for The Shining, and a craft brewery with an extensive barrel-aging program — but long before any of that, this neighborhood chili parlor, established in 1964, was a fixture in the neighborhood. Pleasant Ridge Chili offers all of the chili parlor classics, but it’s known for its thick-cut french fries, famously topped with gravy, but you can get them with chili cheese as well. It’s a cash-only business, so hit up an ATM before visiting.

No list of Cincinnati chili parlors would be complete without mentioning Skyline Chili. While it’s not the oldest parlor still in existence, it is the largest chain, with 160 restaurants in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Florida. It’s so ubiquitous that Cincinnati chili is often colloquially just known as “Skyline” to out-of-towners. The chili here is sweeter than others, so patrons often spice it up with the house hot sauce, a mix of Tabasco, jalapeno, and cayenne pepper. Skyline’s chili is also widely available in cans and frozen in regional grocery stores.

A fixture in Cincinnati’s blue collar Camp Washington neighborhood, the namesake chili parlor is one of the most lauded in the city, including a nod from the James Beard Foundation as an American Regional Classic and a starring role in a Lonnie Mack song. The parlor was founded by Greek immigrant Johnny Johnson in 1940 and is run today by his daughter Maria Papakirk, who traded a career in law for the family restaurant. The chili itself is a little spicier and more savory than other offerings. Try the restaurant’s unique 513-way, which swaps the traditional spaghetti for goetta, a crispy fried loaf composed of pork and pinhead (steel-cut) oats. Camp Washington Chili is open 24 hours a day, six days a week.

Gold Star is the other major chili chain in Cincinnati, founded by the four Daoud brothers. After immigrating from Jordan, the quartet bought the restaurant Hamburger Heaven in Mount Washington in 1965 and shifted the restaurant’s focus to its preexisting chili recipe. Now run by the son of one of the original founders, Roger David, Gold Star has expanded to 70 locations and offers unique dishes like the Gorito, a flour tortilla wrapped around chili, cheddar, chipotle ranch dressing, and Fritos. Gold Star also offers a vegetarian chili using Beyond Meat.

Macedonian immigrant Nicholas Sarakatsannis learned the chili trade in Cincinnati’s first parlor, Empress Chili, before developing his own recipe and starting Dixie Chili across the river in Newport, Kentucky. Today his sons Panny and Spiros Sarakatsannis operate three locations in Kentucky, making 150 gallons of chili a day. The family serves their recipe in the classic ways, but also atop salads, baked potatoes, in soups, and in a six-way that adds fresh-chopped garlic to the typical five-way.

Empress Chili is the parlor that started it all. Founded in 1922, the restaurant served performers and patrons of the Empress Theater in downtown Cincinnati, from which it drew its name. That original location has since closed, but the spirit lives on at a location in Alexandria, Kentucky. The Papakirk family, which operates Camp Washington Chili, acquired Empress from its previous owners in 2012, but kept the Empress recipe the same. In February 2020 they sold the parlor to Alexandria resident Steve Martin. Unique on the menu is a chili pizza, a crust topped with mustard, onions, chili, and cheese.