'I went to the USA's perfect place for breweries, sports and fuss-free food'
The local chilli may be on the mild side – but Cincinnati is heating up as a holiday destination. You can now fly direct to the Ohio city from Heathrow with British Airways, it’s home of the first professional baseball team in the US, it has more bourbon whiskey types than you can drink and of course its own unique chilli (more on that later).
So while it might not be quite top of most people’s lists of places to visit in America just yet, Cincinnati is just about the perfect place to explore Stateside if you like discovering new breweries, sports, restaurants and galleries. Cincinnati, or Cincy as the area is affectionately known, is on the Ohio River with suburbs in Kentucky across the water and offers different experiences to enjoy, and many of its delights are walkable.
Mark Jefferies tries the famous Cincinnati chilli at Skyline (DAILY MIRROR)The Ohio side houses the business district, with skyscrapers alongside the city’s big sports stadiums and museums.
Over on the Kentucky side you have towns such as Covington which have more of a hipster vibe, with the nearby Mainstrasse village an area perfect for bar hopping.
If that isn’t enough, there are also craft beer and bourbon tours and a must-see incredible neon-inspired museum which is perfect to make your friends jealous on Instagram.
You can get paid £2,000 to go on holiday and post about it on social media
There are even unique foods to try including Goetta, a sausage loaf mixed with oats and spices and cut up in chunks, as well as the aforementioned chilli which is served with spaghetti instead of rice and the beef-based sauce has cinnamon, cloves and a dash of chocolate, rather than anything spicy.
American Sign Museum in Cincinnati (Shutterstock / EQRoy)Order a “3-Way” and you will get chilli, spaghetti and cheese, a “4-Way” adds onions and a “5-Way” tacks on kidney beans.
It is not fine cuisine – nor does it try to be – and it is perhaps best tried one evening after drinks instead of a pizza or a burger.
Author and tour guide Rick Pender has written a book called 100 Things To Do In Cincinnati Before You Die and he is confident new tourists will love the place.
He says: “With history and professional sports, arts and culture, a restaurant scene that’s a rival of any city and more craft breweries than you can shake a stein at, Cincinnati continues to be an exciting place to explore. When I guide tours, I often hear people say, ‘I had no idea that Cincinnati was such a great place’.”
Check our Cincy musts...
Where to eat
The best place to sample lots of foods in one go is without doubt Findlay Market (findlaymarket.org).
In the heart of the neighbourhood known as Over-the-Rhine, it is based in a market house built in 1852 and has been open ever since.
Here you have 50 full time businesses including the neighbouring shops which serve Goetta sausage, waffles, barbecued meats and even arepas from Colombia.
My favourite dish was the sweet banana pudding from Makers Bakers Co which cost $7. A cross between a cheesecake and a banana trifle, it was delicious and sweet enough to keep me on the move all day.
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National Underground Railroad Freedom museum (Shutterstock / PT Hamilton)At the other end of the scale, I enjoyed one of the best upmarket meals of my life with the $60 tasting menu at Bouquet restaurant in Covington (bouquetbistro.com). It has relationships with more than 50 local farmers which means it is a constantly evolving menu with the freshest ingredients. My halibut and steak dishes there were cooked to perfection by chef Stephen Williams.
When you try the chilli, the easiest option is to go to Skyline (skylinechili.com), a chain with 130 locations around town which began selling the stuff in 1949, or Gold Star which is also a big operator. Expect to pay around $10-12 for 3-Way and a soft drink.
Where to drink
Not the most obvious place to start but a bottle shop called KY Revival will soon be expanding to a full bar in Covington and offers a unique experience. Owner Brad Bonds sells vintage bottles of spirits including rare and obscure bourbons, gins and tequila. Best of all, many are open to try by the shot for $10-$20. This includes ultra rare whiskey you couldn’t afford to buy in bottles and people have flown in from other states to try drinks here (revivalky.com).
The oldest bar in Cincinnati is Arnold’s Bar And Grill in Downtown, dating from 1861 and filled with local brews.
In Mainstrasse, The Cock & Bull is pretty close to a British boozer with more than a dozen local beers on tap.
Hit the Bourbon Trail (Shutterstock / L.O.N Dslr Camera)Kentucky is often described as the spiritual home of bourbon, and it still accounts for 95 per cent of the world’s production.
Visitors can take a trip along northern Kentucky’s Bourbon Trail with many potential stop-offs – think distilleries and specialist bars and restaurants dubbed the B Line (thebline.com).
But if you have less time, you can still do a distillery tour and try plenty of the hard stuff. Award-winning New Riff offers a first hand look at their fresh take on the distillery process from fermentation to barrelling and bottling of bourbon and rye whiskeys. Prices range from $20-90 (newriffdistilling.com/tour).
If you like history, the American Legacy tour heads deep underground and explores the tunnels that played a vital role in the city’s brewing heritage. (americanlegacytours.com).
Best things to do
Sports fans have a variety of choices to get their fix here; top American football side Cincinnati Bengals play home matches at the Paycor Stadium and on match days from September to December the surrounding bars and restaurants are packed.
Dye your hair orange or wear tiger stripes to fit in!
There is also FC Cincinnati playing MLS football as we know it, and their tickets are reasonably priced to watch matches at the TQL Stadium and easier to buy than Bengals NFL ones. FC Cincinnati play from February through to October.
The Cincinnati Reds baseball team play dozens of games here each year at the Great American Ball Park on the Ohio River. The MLB season runs from April to October and tickets start from as little as $5. Aside from sports, the Contemporary Arts Center is free and is big enough to house several exhibitions at a time so something may catch your eye. Plus the Cincinnati Art Museum has a rich collection of more than 73,000 works spanning the last 6,000 years.
Cincinnati Reds pitcher Alexis Diaz (Getty Images)
Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase (Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)And your day will definitely brighten up if you get to the wonderful American Sign Museum (americansignmuseum.org), a short bus or Uber ride from Downtown in Camp Washington.
It is dedicated to the art of commercial signs and sign making with 12,000 signs on display including fantastic giant neon ones from the 1960s. It’s fun and perfect for photos galore, everyone leaves with a smile on their face.
For a more sobering afternoon, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is a reminder of America’s troubled past with slavery.
Hotel Covington is a good base (DAILY MIRROR)The underground railroad was an escape route and for many slaves that meant getting out of the south and over the Ohio River. More than 100,000 people visit this museum annually to see exhibits about freedom and human rights.
And for the best views in the city you could try some snacks or cocktails at Top Of The Park bar in The Phelps building in Downtown. If you time your visit right you will catch some fireworks at the end of a sports game in a nearby stadium.
Where to stay
The Hotel Covington has recently finished a multimillion-dollar expansion with the opening of North by Hotel Covington. This offers 53 apartment-style rooms next to the original hotel.
The spacious rooms are beautifully designed and the location means you have great bars in the same street as well as two options within the hotel. The restaurants on Mainstrasse are around a 10-minute walk away.
Book the holiday
- British Airways flies from Heathrow to Cincinnati, Ohio, from £498 return. ba.com
- Rooms at the Hotel Covington, Cincinnati Riverfront, start at around £172 a night room-only. hotelcovington.com
- More info at visitcincy.com and meetnky.com
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