The Only Ranch Dressing I've Ever Needed Comes from a Steak House I've Never Eaten At

Ah, ranch dressing: creamy, zesty, uniquely American. Through the decades, it has appeased scores of begrudging lettuce, broccoli, and carrot sticks eaters, and imbued peppery zing into the arduous task of finishing stacks of pizza crust.

Like many Midwestern kids, I grew up with a bottle of ranch occupying a permanent space in the fridge door. However, my family didn't use it very often, nor any bottled dressing for that matter. My mom, like her mother before her, has always made salad dressing from scratch — usually the same version that my German-born grandmother made each day, comprising salad oil, lemon juice, green onion, salt, and pepper.

But on those rare nights when Mom was out teaching art classes and Dad made dinner for my sister and me, he'd break out the bottled ranch — not the far more popular Hidden Valley, but Ken's Steak House Ranch. This stuff is lusciously creamy (owing, I suspect, to the one-two punch of cream and powdered sour cream). It's peppery, tangy from vinegar and buttermilk, and richly savory from dehydrated onion, garlic, and a sprinkling of MSG. It wasn't until recently, however, that I learned that it is connected to an actual steakhouse of the same name in Framingham, Massachusetts.

"Oh, Ken's on Route 9?" Dad said, when I called to ask him why we always had Ken's Steak House Ranch at home. "It was the place. When we would have a special night at work, we'd go there and get the prime rib, and we'd always have the salad."

My dad, Dennis Shea, grew up just outside Boston. Although he hasn't lived in Massachusetts since 1988, he eternally pledges his New England allegiance, particularly in matters of sports teams (Pats! Red Sox! Bruins!) and regional foods (East Coast oysters, Maine lobster, Atlantic fried cod and, of course, Ken's Steak House Ranch).

The Ken's of his 1970s memories oozed sophistication: crisp white tablecloths, well-calibrated martinis and colossal shrimp; the who's who of Boston closing business deals and wooing first dates over thick-cut steaks and pricey Napa Cabs.

"I remember one time when my boss called me and said, 'Dennis, let's go to Ken's,'" he recalled. "And I'm like, oh my god, I'm getting promoted."

Ken and Florence Hanna opened Ken's Steak House in 1941 on a then-desolate stretch of road in the suburbs west of Boston. Its popularity grew steadily throughout the 1950s, mainly for the beef and "honest drinks," but also for Florence Hanna's homemade Italian dressing, which regulars started requesting that they bottle and sell. So in​​ 1958 the Hannas licensed Ken's name to two such regulars, Frank and Louise Crowley, who established Ken's Foods and started manufacturing Ken's Steak House dressings out of their kitchen. The operation would eventually swell to multiple manufacturing facilities, churning out some 400 dressings and sauces to grocery stores nationwide. The lineup included the same rich, tangy ranch that enveloped my dad's romaine salad on every return trip to Ken's Steakhouse.

When we moved to the Chicago suburbs in 1991, I quickly learned that for most kids my age, ranch dressing was all but synonymous with Hidden Valley Ranch, the brand that also lays claim to ranch dressing's origins. Purportedly, a contract plumber in Alaska named Kenneth Henson invented a dressing with buttermilk, dill, and lots of black pepper for meals he often prepared for his coworkers. In 1954, the Hensons purchased a dude ranch near Santa Barbara, California, where Henson's buttermilk dressing became the house dressing and guests' favorite. Bowing to popular demand, they created a dry packaged mix with salt, MSG, dehydrated garlic, parsley, onions, black pepper, and calcium stearate (an emulsifier) — to which home cooks simply added buttermilk — and started selling it at local grocery stores. In 1973, the Hensons sold the dressing brand and the product to The Clorox Company for $8 million. About a decade later, Clorox debuted the ready-to-eat, shelf-stable bottled version that would become a staple of most American households. Except mine.

For a young me, who glamorized my dad's very unglamorous life on the road as a regional salesman for the Hershey Chocolate Company, Ken's Ranch embodied an idealized steak house, where adults in suits and high heels feasted on oversized food and discussed important things like the stock market. More importantly, though, it became representative of those uncommon nights at home when Dad wasn't traveling and he, my sister, and I were on our own for a few hours. We'd eat mildly subversive dinners like eggs and bacon or spaghetti with Hunt's tomato sauce and fried Italian sausages. If we ate salad — "Who needs it?" — we'd blithely heap it with tangy, creamy Ken's, then Dad would insist my sister and I draw up lists of our dream jobs and top-ten travel destinations. In a sense, Ken's reserved a slice of those small escapes from the everyday, like getting to eat Lucky Charms for breakfast on a sleepover, or putting on a dress and bunchy tights to go to the ballet and a dinner out.

To this day, I rarely deviate from topping my daily salads with my grandmother's homemade dressing. I've even become one of those insufferable types who makes her own ranch dressing from time to time. But when I do buy dressing, it's always Ken's Ranch, which I earmark for the most Dad-esque meals, like a wedge salad followed by bone-in ribeye, or bacon and eggs with an obligatory side salad.

Just before we got off the phone, Dad wondered aloud if Ken's was still open. I told him that it was, and that they still served the prime rib, shrimp cocktail, and, of course, romaine salad with ranch.

"You and I will have to get out to Boston and eat there together some time," he said. "You're buyin'."