Best of Taste Winners

Best appetizer: Montgomery Inn

Thirty restaurants submitted nearly 80 dishes in the Best of Taste competition. We got the chosen few to dish - pun intended - on their award-winning creations for Taste of Cincinnati.

THE DISH: Barbecue ribs

FROM: Montgomery Inn

HOW MUCH: $5

THE QUOTE: "The spices and sauce are secret recipes - they're my mother's recipes," says company vice president Dean Gregory. "This is the first time we've done our ribs as an appetizers size - we usually just serve them as a dinner - and we were quite surprised and thrilled to death that we won. I guess that means we're going to have to put a rib appetizer on our menu now, which we're planning on doing. ... The public has spoken."

WHAT DO YOU ENJOY MOST ABOUT TASTE? "It's just a great, great time. It's like a melting pot that weekend," Gregory says. "It seems like everybody's there, and we don't have enough events like that in Cincinnati, where you draw a couple hundred thousand people down there on a weekend. It's great for the city; it's great for the restaurants."