Kiradjieff brothers

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The Kiradjieff brothers were Bulgarian American restaurateurs who created Cincinnati chili. They were Macedonian immigrants from Hrupishta in the Ottoman Empire. Their father Kostadin was involved in Bulgarian revolutionary activities and the Bulgarian Exarchate. After the Balkan Wars, the town became part of Greece, and many Slavic speakers left the area.

Tom (Athanas) Kiradjieff was born in 1892 and John (Ivan) Kiradjieff in 1895. Both served in the Bulgarian army during World War I. In 1921 they emigrated to the United States, first settling in New York to sell hot dogs, then moving to Cincinnati with their older brother Argir (Argie). Argir, born in 1880, had already moved to Cincinnati by 1918 and ran a grocery store.

In Cincinnati, Tom worked as a bank clerk by day and cooked chili for customers at night at his brother’s place. That is where Cincinnati chili was created. In 1922 they opened a hot dog stand next to a burlesque theater called the Empress and named the business Empress Chili.

Argir went back to Bulgaria to find wives. Tom and John also married and returned to Cincinnati with their families. By 1933 the Kiradjieff brothers were among Cincinnati’s most successful Bulgarians, owning a large restaurant in the city center. Argir’s wife did not adjust to American life, and the couple moved back to Macedonia in the 1940s.

Empress Chili grew into a local chain. In 1959 the brothers announced a new drive-in car-service design. Tom died in 1960 and John in 1953. The last in the family to run the business was Tom’s son, Assen (Joe) Kiradjieff (1930–2024), who operated Empress Chili from the late 1950s as his father’s health declined. In 2009, Joe retired at age 79 and sold Empress Chili, ending the chain’s run.