The restaurants around here all have some sort of vinagerette as their house dressing. Many also have a house sauce that they serve as a dip; at one place their house sauce is a delicious garlic aiolo.
One particular Italian restaurant serves a salad with every meal. Each table gets a cruet of oil/vinegar/seasonings which serves as your salad dressing. No other dressings in the house, don’t bother asking!
I have never been to a diner with a house dressing. A diner will have a choice of dressings, which as far as I can tell all come out of a bottle. A restaurant may have a choice of dressings , one of which includes “house” or a restaurant may not have any choices and serve all the salads with the house dressing - but although the house dressing may be a ranch or vinaigrette based dressing, it’s typically not the same as you would get out of a bottle. There’s one restaurant that I go to (Little Nemo probably knows it ) that has a house dressing that as far as I can tell is a blue cheese dressing with BBQ sauce.
That’s actually what happens 99% of the time in Italy.
And they the salad after the main course.
I like this idea. It reminds me of places that don’t offer ketchup to ruin their french fries.
Once in Wyoming we were at a chi-chi hotel restaurant and had a very young waitress who had apparently just started. When we asked “What’s the soup de jour?” (as they had it on the menu) she said, brightly, “Oh! That’s the soup of the day!” She had evidently just learned that that morning. 
That was probably a typo. I think he meant SOUP du joup.
Spicy stuff.
Formerly Chuck’s.
mmm
I grew up in a town in the middle of nowhere in the California desert, where the best restaurant in town had a “house dressing”. It was a particularly unique dressing, unlike any other dressing I’ve ever had. Nothing like ranch; it was reddish in color, and had some finely minced vegetables in it. They are still serving that same house dressing, the same recipe, forty years later. I love it.
actually on the sauce cup im holding from jack in the box its a joke now
it says “buttermilk house sauce” then under it:
a.k.a. ranch
Just to clear this up — Copyright law protects works of expression, like books, films, and songs. It does not protect single words, names, short phrases, or slogans.
yeah, look up the story on how Bayer lost the trademark to the word aspirin …
I remember being told coke would send out little flyers to places that had soda fountains reminding/demanding them to use “coke” only when referring to coca cola so they didn’t lose the trademark the same way seems some places referred to any type of cola as coke …
A house tastes better than a ranch?
I remember in the late 70’s-early 80’s when I first became aware of Ranch, it being called House at many places. These days the only dressing I know of being called House is served at a local Italian place and it’s nothing even close to Ranch. Very much in the “a vinegar based Italian dressing” category, but I don’t care for it at all. Fortunately they have a very delicious Ranch dressing and I order that when I have a salad from there.
Amusing side-note: My very first restaurnt job in 1983 was at Arby’s, when it still had a salad bar. The names of the dressings were imprinted on the handles of the ladles, and the ladle for the “lite” Italian dressing was stampled “Lo-cal”, short for “Low calorie”, of course. Except it didn’t include the hyphen and the two word fragments were too close together, so most of the employees and customers thought that it said “Local” and supposed it to be some kind of fresh, locally-made dressing (which would be madness in a fast-food restaurant).
When I was in college I worked at an Italian restaurant. What was called House Dressing was homemade. It was equal parts olive oil, vinegar and parmesan cheese, blended. I never ate salad but that stuff was pretty good for dipping bread into.
I just visited a local arcade called “Round 1” and at their food court their ranch dressing is called “House Ranch” too.
House dressing? I’d ask what it was. Could be anything. Bugs me. I would imagine it bugs servers to have to explain it again and again and again. It’s stupid.
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