House Dressings That Rock

SPIN! Pizza (Kansas City) is one of my favorite places to eat. The pizza is nice, but it’s the Sonoma Salad with blood orange vinaigrette I’m talking about. I could swim in the dressing. I’ve driven there for the single purpose of buying a container of it (for nearly the price of a pizza). And then there’s a great Korean restaurant nearby with another dressing that drives me wild. When I’m done with that salad, I often ask for extra lettuce to lap up the remaining dressing in the bowl.

This obsession with restaurant signature salad dressings led me to ask the editor of National Culinary Review if I could write an article on it. I wondered what restaurants consider when they develop these dressings and if many of them sell it. I thought it would be a great way for restaurants to make some extra money.

The article is out (to the right-House Dressings), and it’s targeted to the restaurant operator. My biggest learning was that it’s not such a hot idea to go gangbusters selling the dressing. Homemade salad dressing doesn’t have the preservatives of supplier-sourced dressing, and therefore it spoils quickly—sometimes within two or three days.

 Here are some other interesting random things I learned about restaurant house dressings:

•  Though selling the dressing might not be the best idea, if there’s a spice mixture used in the dressing, why not sell that mixture and attach the recipe for consumers to make the dressing at home? One chef does that.
• The best signature house dressings are middle-of-the-road in flavor and are not created to fulfill all of a chef’s wild and crazy flavor dreams. It has to appeal to 70-90% of consumers, not just an adventurous handful. The dressing will have the right balance of sweet, sour and salty.
• Popular right now are classic dressings with a twist, like ranch or Italian with popular flavorings, like bacon or chili.
• It can still be considered a homemade dressing if a chef purchases ranch, for instance, and adds extra ingredients to it, like a roasted pepper mixture.
• Some well-known chefs like to do dressing development on the side for other restaurants, just to use their creative juices. SPIN! did it with its signature salad dressings. James Beard Award-winning chef Michael Smith of Michael Smith Restaurant and Extra Virgin, both in Kansas City, developed them.
• Restaurants wanting to cut down on the sugar in the dressing recipe can use such vegetable purees as carrot or sweet onion. They are naturally sweet. The puree also acts as a binder.
• Yogurt can work in place of mayo or heavy cream to cut down on fat and calories.

Tell me what you think about signature salad dressings.

Jody

Comments

[michelle doherty]

Jody,

I agree!! The dressing on the sonoma salad is out of this world...I am useless at making homemade vinaigrettes but I never thought of purchasing it from Spin directly...what a great idea! Thanks!

Michelle