‘Horrible.’ ‘Inedible.’ KC Chiefs-Bengals game stirs up the Cincinnati chili haters

Well, here’s one bet over the Chiefs-Bengals game Sunday that might leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth.

Just ask Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce —a Ohio native — about Cincinnati chili.

On Wednesday, local Reps. Emanuel Cleaver and Sharice Davids challenged their new congressman colleague from Ohio, Rep. Greg Landsman: “some of KC’s finest BBQ” versus that stuff they call chili in Ohio.

Landsman tweeted that he can’t wait to watch Cleaver and Davids “enjoy” Skyline chili — Skyline is an iconic restaurant chain that serves Cincinnati-style chili — wearing Bengals jerseys next week.

Hmmm. Interesting word choice — “enjoy.”

Would Davids and Cleaver really “enjoy” a bowl of “disgusting chili gravy” served over spaghetti? (The salty words of New York Mets broadcaster Gary Cohen, not ours.)

Would they really “enjoy” what the late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain called a “mutant hybrid” of cinnamon, chocolate, cloves and other spices?

Here we are, once again, talking about food in the NFL postseason. It happens every year when VIPs and we regular folks place bets based on our hometowns’ iconic foods.

What? You thought this was just about football?

Every time the Chiefs make it into the postseason, Kansas City leaders bet barbecue. On Thursday, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas visited Arthur Bryant’s to issue a long-distance challenge to Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval.

If the Chiefs lose, Lucas will send the Ohio mayor Bryant’s barbecue and a Charlie Hustle Kansas City BBQ T-shirt.

No word yet on what Lucas will receive if the Chiefs win. But the mayors began talkin’ food earlier this week.

“So they got chili out there, Mayor @AftabPureval?” Lucas tweeted on Monday.

“The world’s best. I hear you all do decent barbecue,” Pureval tweeted back.

Acrimony toward Cincinnati’s quirky chili has simmered for generations. A photo of a Bengals fan holding a sign declaring Skyline chili to be better than Buffalo wings goosed the hatred after the Bengals beat the Bills last weekend.

Is that why so many Bills fans are rooting for the Chiefs this weekend? No one messes with the wings.

Social media critics breathe fire over the chili every time the Bengals make it into the postseason. Here’s a sampling of recent reviews.

“Went to school 3 yrs in Cincinnati. I tried to like it but it’s inedible!!”

“Here in s.e. Kansas they call that slop spaghetti red.”

“I don’t know why some people think Cincinnati chili is so good. I ate Skyline chili once and it was absolutely horrible. Cumin, cinnamon, brown sugar, and chocolate DO NOT belong in chili.”

“I don’t understand chili on noodles.”

“The best way to enjoy Cincinnati chili is by tossing it in the garbage.”

Last month, Kelce offered his own scathing critique.

Before the Chiefs played the Bengals in Cincinnati, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes was a guest on “New Heights,” the podcast hosted by Kelce and his brother, Jason, named after their hometown of Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

Jason asked Mahomes if he planned to have some chili while he was in town.

“I’m not a chili guy,” he said.

Then Kelce, who played college football at the University of Cincinnati, weighed in.

“If I look at it, and it looks like that, I’m not eating it,” he said. “If it’s coming out the same way it looks going in. … I’ll just get the noodles that it comes with.”

After he tried it, Bourdain offered advice to first-time Cincinnati chili eaters: “You don’t ask what’s in it, you don’t ask how it’s made. You just enjoy it.”

If only everyone could.

In 2014, Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Dan Horn introduced himself to readers by writing: “I hate Cincinnati chili.”

“I want to fit in, to be accepted, even if it means eating chocolate tomato sauce over spaghetti smothered in orange cheese and raw onions while pretending it all adds up to something that can legally, ethically and morally be called ‘chili.’”

Last year the executive features editor of Food and Wine, who grew up in the Cincinnati metro, got so fed up with all the chili hate she wrote a column defending it, declaring, “I will tolerate no slander of it.”

“We can agree that sauce-like clove-nutmeg-cinnamon-and-god-knows-what-else-infused Cincinnati chili bears little resemblance to the bean-studded or beef-chunked stews that other regions of this great land might recognize as chili,” Kat Kinsman wrote.

“But that’s no justification for the torrent of bile Cincinnati chili receives from those unaccustomed to its pleasures.”

Kinsman called the chili “mother’s milk” and the “pride of the Queen City.”

“I try not to take it personally, but I do,” she wrote. “An ugly baby is still someone’s kid.”

She explained the immigrant story behind the chili, how brothers from Macedonia, now part of northern Greece, added flavors from home to American-style chili, “adapting a Mediterranean stew spiced with cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon, and adding chili powder along with other spices they’d grown up with.”

The locals loved it. Many have been sharing their thoughts lately on social media.

“It looks like Alpo for people when you pour it out of the can (especially if you buy the can with spaghetti already in it, Chef Boyardee style) but I love it, probably have ten cans of it on my shelf at the moment.”

“Skyline is one of my guilty pleasures!”

“What you’ve heard about Skyline isn’t wrong,” the senior Kentucky correspondent for sports blog Deadspin, wrote in 2017.

“Its unsavory presentation and intense cinnamon flavor can make it an unenjoyable eating experience for even the hungriest of people.

“But to truly comprehend and appreciate why Skyline has endured for decades as a staple of tri-state cuisine, one must look beyond the darkness and read past the chili slander to see why this Cincinnati-based chili chain elicits such a loyal following.

“Blue collar, white collar, indigent, and WASP alike meet with their families at the Greek-immigrant-founded chili chain not because they’re in search of the latest foodie trend or an exquisite culinary achievement, but because sharing a plate of Skyline amongst friends and family provides the people of the Midwest and Upper South with a sense that remains fleeting for many: comfort.“

Sure, Midwesterners know all about chili as comfort food. And Cincinnati-style isn’t the only way of eating it that gives pause.

Hey, you Chiefs fans from Kansas. Chili and cinnamon rolls? Really?