Tom Kiradjieff and John Kiradjieff were Bulgarian American restaurateurs and Macedonian immigrants, credited for their creation of a regional specialty dish known as the Cincinnati chili. [1] [2] [3]
Tom Kiradjieff and John Kiradjieff were Bulgarian American restaurateurs and Macedonian immigrants, credited for their creation of a regional specialty dish known as the Cincinnati chili. [1] [2] [3]
The brothers were born in the town of Hrupishta, [4] in the Ottoman Empire, [note 2] [5] to Bulgarian parents. [6] Their father Kostadin was a member of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, and actively participated in the affairs of the Bulgarian Exarchate. [note 3] [7] [8] The town was annexed during the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) by Greece. The partition of the Ottoman lands of the region of Macedonia between the Balkan nation-states resulted in the fact, that some of the Slavic speakers of Ottoman Macedonia emigrated to Bulgaria, or left the area. [9]
Athanas (Tom) was born in 1892. During the First World War, he was a soldier in the Bulgarian Army. In 1917 he was dismissed and moved to the Bulgarian capital Sofia, where he worked for a time as an accountant. [6] His little brother Ivan (John) born in 1895 had served also some time with the Bulgarian army. [4] In 1921 both emigrated to the United States.
They settled initially in New York, [10] but after selling hot dogs there for some time, the brothers followed their big brother Argir (Argie) to Cincinnati. [note 4] Born in 1880, he was a cashier of the Bulgarian Exarchate Church-School Board in Hrupishta. [7] Argie had settled in Cincinnati by 1918, where he opened a grocery store. [11] In Cincinnati the brothers began to develop their own business. Tom got a job as a bank clerk and worked at night, cooking chili for the customers in his brother's place. It was at this time that Tom invented the regional specialty known as Cincinnati chili.
In 1922 they opened a hot dog stand located next to a burlesque theater called the Empress, which they named their business after. Tom and John returned to Bulgaria to find wives, while Argir went to his homeland for this purpose. Argir stayed there for several years, and when he came back, his two brothers were well established and provided him a job as a cashier. According to the journalist Vasil Stephanoff, [note 5] in 1933 the Kiradjieff brothers were among the most successful Bulgarians in the city, owners of a large and modern restaurant in the city center. [12] [13]
Argir's wife did not adapt to America, and they moved back to Macedonia in the 1940s. [note 6] [4] [14] The Empress Chili grew to become a local chain. In 1959, the Kiradjieffs of Empress Chili, announced they be the first to come up with a new design for drive in, car-service. The last man who ran the family business was Tom's son Assen (Joe) Kiradjieff. Since the late 1950s, when his father's health sharply declined, Joe operated the Empress Chili. Tom died in 1960, while John had died in 1953. Later the Empress chain had a single surviving outlet. In 2009, 79-year-old Joe retired and sold the Empress Chili. [15]
The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, was a secret revolutionary society founded in the Ottoman territories in Europe, that operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Bulgarian Exarchate was the official name of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church before its autocephaly was recognized by the Ecumenical See in 1945 and the Bulgarian Patriarchate was restored in 1953.
Hristo Tatarchev was a Macedonian Bulgarian doctor, revolutionary and one of the founders of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). Tatarchev authored several political journalistic works between the First and Second World War.
Gyorche Petrov Nikolov born Georgi Petrov Nikolov, was a Bulgarian teacher and revolutionary, one of the leaders of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). He was its representative in Sofia, the capital of Principality of Bulgaria. As such he was also a member of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee (SMAC), participating in the work of its governing body. During the Balkan Wars, Petrov was a Bulgarian army volunteer, and during the First World War, he was involved in the activity of the Bulgarian occupation authorities in Serbia and Greece. Subsequently, he participated in Bulgarian politics, but was eventually killed by the rivaling IMRO right-wing faction. According to the Macedonian historiography, he was an ethnic Macedonian.
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Vasil Kanchov was a geographer, ethnographer and teacher who served as Minister of Education of Bulgaria.
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Due to the lack of original protocol documentation, and the fact its early organic statutes were not dated, the first statute of the clandestine Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) is uncertain and is a subject to dispute among researchers. The dispute also includes its first name and ethnic character, as well as the authenticity, dating, validity, and authorship of its supposed first statute. Certain contradictions and even mutually exclusive statements, along with inconsistencies exist in the testimonies of the founding and other early members of the Organization, which further complicates the solution of the problem. It is not yet clear whether the earliest statutory documents of the Organization have been discovered. Its earliest basic documents discovered for now, became known to the historical community during the early 1960s.