Picnics and barbecues are where many of us will eat this Fourth of July. But restaurants are great places to have an all-American meal, too. During this patriotic week, salute our country's traditional and diverse foods with one of these Cincinnati culinary experiences.

        Barbecue joints: Storefronts, front yards, parking lots, anywhere someone can set up an old barrel and smoke some ribs.

        Fast-food french fries: The ultimate in engineered, market-researched, scientifically studied and mass-distributed foodstuffs.

        The East African restaurant in Pleasant Ridge: Immigrants from a part of Africa that hasn't known peace or prosperity in decades start a small restaurant serving their native food.

        Likewise, Song Phung Vietnamese restaurant in Forest Park, Jordan Valley Mideastern restaurant, downtown, and El Pueblito Mexican restaurant in Florence. Ethnic understanding starts with great pho or chicken shawarma.

        Graeter's ice cream: Oh the power of American media. Oprah gets it shipped in dry ice, touts it on national television, Cincinnati company receives orders from around the country.

        One of Jeff Ruby's restaurants: An experience that combines large pieces of meat, conspicuous consumption, sports stars, a self-made man as owner and (at Carlo & Johnny in Montgomery) a theme celebrating outlaws.

        Chinese buffets (such as the Grand Buffet in Columbia Township): I'm pretty sure they don't have any all-you-can-eat sushi-egg roll-broccoli beef-salad bar-crab legs-sweet and sour pork-soft serve ice cream establishments in China.

        Even more so: Golden Corral. Cheap food you can eat 'til you burst.

        Pizza delivery: Italian food transformed into something new by American immigrants. And we can get it any time we want without leaving home. How would the down-sized American economy survive without takeout pizza to feed its over-worked employees and their families?

        Chipotle Grill: Nine years ago, Steve Ells had one restaurant. Now he has 200 all over the country and is in partnership on one hand with McDonald's and on the other with Niman Farms, a pig-raising operation dedicated to small family farms and environmentally sensitive farming methods.

        Vegetarian hot dogs: Even served at Cinergy Field.

        Hamburger Mary's, downtown: A restaurant whose theme is the gay lifestyle.

        Any Cincinnati chili parlor. As international food writer Michael Stern says, it's a cockamamie kind of food: Greek flavorings, chili, pasta, Wisconsin cheese — all rolled into a new kind of dish.

        Buffalo chicken wings. Twenty years ago, they were an oddity in one bar in Buffalo, N.Y. Now they're big business. And if you want to get them super-tongue-burning hot, well, that's your constitutional right.

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