Where to celebrate International Pickle Week:

        Actually, pickles — “the world's most humorous vegetable,” according to Pickle Packers International — get more than a week: The celebration begins Friday and goes through May 27.

        In restaurants, pickles are among those hard-working but little-regarded food items. They add the crunch to burgers, they give the take-out sandwich lunch a “side dish,” and you can't make potato salad without them. But, occasionally, pickles take center stage.

        They've been around a while, but there still is something humorous about fried dill pickles. This is an appetizer from the South, where deep-frying is a way of life. They've been selling them at Picklefest in Atkins, Ark., for 20 years or more. Toot's in Landen, a branch of the original in Murfreesboro, Tenn., sells many fried dill pickles — dill pickle chips dipped in batter and deep-fried, served with homemade blue cheese dressing. They go well with beer.

        The Courthouse Restaurant in Independence also has fried dills on its menu.

        If you like dills in their original state, drop by an Izzy's location for lunch, where there's a jar of pale-green kosher dills cut in chunky slices on the tables. They are good and crunchy, salty of course, but closer to real cucumbers than the dark green pickles that end up in slices on hamburgers.

        You can pay for a whole dill pickle at Izzy's, just like the ones the deli will be selling on a stick at Taste of Cincinnati May 25-27.

        At the opposite end of the pickle spectrum are the traditional Midwestern sweet pickles on the relish tray at the Golden Lamb in Lebanon. Watermelon pickles, bread-and-butter pickles, pickled cauliflower or beets — all as much candied as pickled.

        Every cuisine has pickles (though few fry them). The French have a favorite pickle, the cornichon. These are tiny gherkins, very crisp and rather sweet. They are almost always served with pate. At Le Cezanne in Hyde Park and Wyoming, they make a pate sandwich that consists of just a section of baguette, pate and sliced cornichon. All three elements are equally important to the final effect of this satisfying sandwich.

        Then there are the fiery pickles on Indian buffets or the mystery pickles that are always part of a Japanese meal, but those are for the advanced pickle eater.

        E-mail pcampbell@cincinnati.com

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