What you need to know for Taste of Cincinnati

• When%3A 11 a.m.- midnight May 23 and 24%2C 11 a.m.- 9 p.m. May 25
• Where%3A On Fifth Street Downtown%2C between Sentinel and Vine%2C including Fountain Square
• Cost%3A Free. Food samples cost from %243-%246

They call it the Taste of Cincinnati because it showcases restaurants from the city – the great majority of them local independents. But can one festival really reflect the unique, quirky food personality of Cincinnati?

Well, it's hard to "get" Cincinnati without the actual surroundings in which we eat: chili at a counter, spaghetti in Pompilio's old-style dining room, or beer at the Lager House overlooking the river, but some of our signature tastes can certainly be found all along Fifth Street on Memorial Day weekend. Not everything about Cincinnati is represented at the festival (No Graeter's or UDF ice cream!), but the line-up captures many of the essentials.

Classic Cincinnati

Some of our most beloved hometown foods will be there. It would hardly taste like Cincinnati without chili or LaRosa's.

The Silver Ladle isn't one of the "name" chili parlors, but the downtown restaurant will be serving our signature dish of Greek-spiced meat chili on spaghetti topped with cheddar.

Mecklenburg Gardens and Wertheim's represent the German or Germanish food that we've had plenty of since the Germans starting immigrating here starting about 1848. (Though the sauerkraut ball was a later invention!) The Wurst Bar will run some modern variations on the wursts we've always loved.

The Moerlein Lager House represents all that's going on in the new beer culture of Cincinnati, which draws heavily on our old beer culture.

We may not be a famous barbecue town, but there are plenty of Cincinnatians whose came up here in the great southern migration north and set up grills in back yards and parking lots and small bbq joints.

Eddie's Southern Style BBQ and Walt's Hitching Post will serve the ribs and pulled pork we tend to like here.

Oriental Wok is a classic Chinese-American restaurant from Northern Kentucky that's been around since 1977.

Izzy's may not be a classic kosher deli anymore, but their potato pancakes and corned beef sandwiches date back to the 1880s, when Izzy's was the first kosher delicatessen west of the Alleghenies. (Cincinnati is the home of Reform Judaism and the first home of Manischewitz matzos.)

Buddy LaRosa got his start in the Little Italy of Cincinnati, on the west side of town. Starting with his aunt's recipe, he built a local pizza empire with LaRosa's which still provides many Cincinnatians with their pizza ideal. Pompilio's has been in Newport since before the Depression.

Busken's, representing our richness of retail bakeries, will bring their smiley cookies. The sweet cookies with the hard coating and the black smile printing that sometimes come off on your fingers are a nostalgic taste for anyone who was a kid in Cincinnati, and are featured on some of the best billboards in town.

Washington Platform Saloon and Restaurant has been putting on an oyster festival for 28 years in a historic saloon Downtown. They'll have fried oysters over Cajun rice among other dishes at their booth.

Hungarian might not be a big part of the Cincinnati menu, but Laszlo's Iron Skillet has been acquainting people with the cuisine for more than 40 years. Plus they serve excellent schnitzel, a dish right at home in a Germanic context.

Greeks are important to Cincinnati's food personality, since they invented the chili and still own many of the parlors. On the west side, especially, you'll also find gyros and Greek dishes here and there on menus. Remezo is a new Greek restaurant – they'll have spanakopita, souvlaki and more Greek dishes. Chicago Gyros brings the gyros.

We used to be known as Porkopolis. Well, food truck Bistro De Mohr is bringing hogballs, an unexpectedly delicious morsel of pork made from locally-raised pigs. There's also something called whole hog from Panino food truck.

Plenty of ethnic food

The number of Italian, Chinese and Thai restaurants in a city don't necessarily reflect the make-up of a city's population, because everybody likes Italian, Chinese and Thai. There are plenty of them around here.

Bangkok Bistro, Thai Taste and Budina bring the Thai and Chinese (and the crab Rangoon, of which there are three kinds).

Bella Luna has been a fixture at Taste for many years. They're bringing butternut squash lasagna, shrimp scampi ravioli, Italian beef sliders and banana nutella bread pudding this year. There's more Italian from Ramundo Family Sausage Co, plus Pompilio's and several choices of pizza from Pizza Tower, Catch-a Fire Pizza and LaRosa's.

There's also Vietnamese from Le's Pho and Sandwiches (chicken bahn mi sandwiches), Armenian/Russian/ Uzbek from Oasis Grill, Cajun from J Gumbo's, Jamaican from Ena's Jerkmania, Lebanese from Andy's Mediterranean Grille, Mexican from Habanero and Japanese from Maki Express (some new dishes that have never been at Taste before, such as okonomiyaki, yasai korokke, and chicken karaage).

Our fine-dining restaurants

Probably the least-represented aspect of Cincinnati's dining scene at the Taste is fine dining. The conditions of a big street festival make it difficult to bring elaborate dishes. But there are some fun, more upscale or trendy dishes to try at the booths, food trucks and in the Taste Experience.

There's the above-mentioned Bella Luna, plus Italian-Argentine from Alfio's Buon Cibo, and Via Vite, who's bringing cioppino in addition to last year's hit veal ricotta meatballs and pulled pork panini.

Blue Ash's fine-dining The Brown Dog Cafe will be at the Taste Experience, an area in P&G Gardens where restaurants serve for 3 hours instead of the whole weekend. So will Meritage Restaurant, plus steakhouses Prime 47 and Ruth's Chris.

Panino, in Food Truck Alley, is bringing back their duck crostini and The Whole Hog, a chunky bolognese on bread.

The 'Wich on Sycamore makes some of the best sandwiches in town, and they're bringing their eggplant and goat cheese sandwich, plus a chicken salad wrap and their award-winning coconut chicken soup.

More sandwiches from grilled cheese restaurant Tom and Chee, who've earned some national notoriety for their grilled cheese doughnut and other fanciful variations on grilled cheese and tomato soup.

Streetpops will offer refreshing popsicles in flavors such as pomegranate tangerine and Thai basil lime.

Food trucks

They were just a budding fad five years ago, but Cincinnati has embraced the food truck movement in a big way, with more than 30 trucks plying the streets. Some are showcased at Taste in Food Truck Alley. They include:

Panino, with local, artisan foods, Bistro de Mohr, with locally-raised meat, Catch-a-Fire Pizza, with a mobile wood-fired oven, C'est Cheese, with quirky grilled cheese sandwiches, Empanadas Aqui with the Latin-American folded pastries, Marty's Waffles serving Belgian waffles, Red Sesame Korean, bringing Korean bbq tacos, desserts from Sugar Snap! and Mexican food from Texas Joe's Mexican

Taste Experience

A more intimate dining experience during Taste weekend offers three-hour windows of time for small restaurants to offer their own dishes without taking on the big commitment of time and labor that a full booth requires.

During the weekend, you'll find the American Culinary Federation of Greater Cincinnati, Brezel (big pretzels), Brown Dog Cafe, Buona Terra (gelato), Igby's (craft cocktails), Jenny's Homemade Cookies, Jim Dandy BBQ, and Lachey's from Cincinnati's own Nick and Drew Lachey. Also, Lucky Dog Grille, Luigi's Olde World, Madisono's Gelato and Sorbet, Meritage Restaurant, Nick & Tom's, Prime 47, Riverside Korean, Ruth's Chris, Smoq and Yardhouse.

More information: www.tasteofcincinnati.com