Ken’s Steak House Ranch Dressing Is Already Perfect to Me
Here’s my favorite salad recipe: little tomatoes cut into quarters, half a cup of frozen corn (warmed gently in the microwave), one minced scallion, a couple spicy radishes, and an entire head of finely chopped romaine lettuce. To this, add an entire sweet potato, roasted in crispy cubes and seasoned liberally with flaky salt and black pepper. Then, toss a veggie burger, preferably sizzling with cheddar jack, on top.
Pretty good salad, right? Wrong. It’s just OK.
Crack open a bottle of Ken’s Steak House Ranch Dressing and douse the whole thing.
Now, it’s perfect.
Let me back up because I worry you’ve gotten the wrong impression of me. I eat entire heads of lettuce! I put ground flaxseed in my oatmeal! I genuinely like chia pudding! As I’ve grown into adulthood, I’ve traded rail gin and 2:00 am burgers for the common-sense healthy things that everybody should do — plus a few things that will saddle me with sponsored ads from GOOP for the rest of my days.
But despite all this, I can’t seem to stop restocking on ranch. My gnarly Ken’s Steak House Ranch addiction disturbs me, and I can’t seem to shake it. As it turns out, Ken’s Steak House is a real place. You can still go there for a hunk of beef and one of their famous salads. A little more digging will reveal that Ken’s Ranch wasn’t invented by Ken at all — but by his wife, Florence.
It all started during the Great Depression. Ken and Florence Hanna were two years deep into the financial downturn, scraping out a living near Lake Cochituate on the outskirts of Boston. Desperate to make ends meet for their children, they opened their first restaurant, which they dubbed the Lakeside Cafe. As local lore has it, everybody just called the place Ken’s.
With time, the restaurant grew into a small, local franchise. Ken and Florence bought up a few little diners in the area, slowly expanding their family business while serving up simple food and good coffee. Like all American diners, their restaurants combined the small luxury of eating out — hot ovens and dirty dishes kept out of sight — with a casual atmosphere and affordable prices.
In 1941, Ken and Florence took on their biggest challenge yet: They purchased a washed-up diner known as McHale’s that was stranded on a Framingham-adjacent stretch of Route 9. Everyone called that patch of Massachusetts road “Starvation Alley,” but Ken and Florence had a hunch it didn’t have to be that way.
They were right. The pair opened up a steakhouse, aiming for a slightly fancier atmosphere and menu to make their restaurant worthy of the drive. Today, people recall it as a special occasion destination where they once celebrated anniversaries, birthdays, graduations, or just a nice meal out. Today, we know Starvation Alley as the Golden Mile, and it’s nationally recognized as one of New England’s largest retail districts. The Ken’s you can visit today is still there, wedged among a Legal Sea Foods, a Melting Pot, and a Bertucci’s.
In 1958, sensing demand, a couple named Frank and Louise Crowley, who were friends with Ken and Florence, began an offshoot business in their own kitchen. Called Ken’s Foods, they began bottling and selling smaller quantities of the restaurant’s now-famous house dressing. (They were later served with a lawsuit brought by Ken’s son.) Ken’s may have arguably perfected ranch dressing, but the condiment has its roots in California. As Ken and Florence’s business blossomed, another couple invested in their own dreams.
In 1954, Kenneth (later known as Steve) and Gayle Henson bought 120 acres near Santa Barbara and opened up a dude ranch called Hidden Valley. They hosted wannabe cowboys in the California sun, exposing them to the Nebraska farm life that Steve had grown up with, while serving up hearty food.
To make ends meet, they sold a powdered version of their own recipe for ranch dressing. Customers had to simply mix with buttermilk, sour cream, or mayonnaise. Guests were wild about the ranch dressing, and soon it was the cornerstone of their business. Sales of the powdered ranch dressing mix skyrocketed so rapidly that one retailer suspected his staff of stealing it. Soon enough, corporations came knocking, and by 1973, Steve and Gayle had shuttered their dude ranch and cashed in $8 million, transferring their precious ranch formula to Clorox.
At this point, Hidden Valley ranch transformed from a local delicacy to a national obsession. Clorox’s chemical wizards were responsible for a few key innovations in the ranch game. In 1983, they introduced a shelf-stable bottle that freed consumers from the nuisance of mixing the powdered flavoring with their own dairy base. A few years later, ranch became available as a luscious dip for chips and vegetables.
Some people follow the Chinese New Year or the zodiac; as it happens, my birth year, 1992, was a particularly momentous year in ranch history. It was the year ranch finally outstripped Italian as America’s favorite salad dressing. It was also the year that the CDC identified a whopping six states with 15-19% obesity. America loved the romance of the wide-open plains, the wild onion, the honesty of mayonnaise and the pure pleasure of the chip.
Today, Ken’s Foods has tentacles that snake across the country, from Massachusetts to Georgia to Nevada, pumping out over 400 salad dressings and marinades. Their recipe page rivals Martha Stewart, in case you ever need help finding more ways to incorporate Ken’s into your diet.
Decades have come and gone, and ranch dressing is still going strong. In 2017, ranch was two and a half times more popular than Italian. But contenders are emerging. The Kitchn tracks the most popular recipes on Pinterest and discovered that people are glopping a horrific-looking blend of onions, peanut oil, ginger, celery, and spices on lettuce, creating a thick, orange paste.
Ken’s Steak House still perches on the Golden Mile, among the businesses its presence bolstered, serving up steak after steak and allowing guests to take photos next to its proud display case of salad dressings. But without Ken and Florence at the helm, it seems that their flagship steakhouse is fading. Some diners turn to Yelp to vent their frustrations about Ken’s iceberg salads, unrenovated interior, and empty parking lot.
The current owner of Ken’s Steak House, Craig T., personally replies to many of the negative reviews on Yelp. It’s hard not to picture him bracing himself for the day’s Yelp reviews during slow afternoons at the restaurant, letting out a deep sigh as cucumbers and tomatoes wilt quietly at their stations.
“Marguerite, it was disappointing to see this! It sounds like you had some issues with our service, especially,” he typed to one disappointed diner last year on June 15. “We just want you to have a great time when you're here, and you deserve attentive, friendly service. We need to be better. We hope that you can give us another chance in the future.”
But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. On March 17, 2018, a diner named Carolyn G. logged on to boost Ken’s rating.
“We hadn't been to Natick in quite a while…nor had we been to Ken's since. We were happy that it still had the same great steaks, service and friendly atmosphere — kinda like home,” Carolyn wrote.
She and her husband enjoyed their meal and the service: “Our waiter, Jason Q, was prompt, friendly and efficient. He brought over the most fabulous warm buns — sweet and savory. Our salads were ice cold and very crisp with that wonderful Ken's Italian dressing on mine and the Parmesan Peppercorn on my husband’s. We both had the junior sirloin steaks that were very flavorful and cooked perfectly, mashed potatoes, and steamed broccoli.
“I can't understand anyone complaining about Ken’s,” she concluded.
On food websites, an entire genre of articles promises to help you kick premade salad dressing to the curb. It’s so easy, they nag, and it tastes so much better. Why wouldn’t anyone want to emulsify homemade mayonnaise and lemon juice and herbs after working all day?
Meanwhile, Ken’s Ranch continues to keep a place of honor in my fridge. It’s thick and salty and vinegary and oniony. The first three ingredients are soybean oil, water, and sugar. I pick it up and weigh the remaining dressing in my hand occasionally, wondering if I will restock next time I’m at Safeway.
I need my salad dressing to be better, I think, remembering the articles that tell me I’m supposed to ditch the bottled stuff and start living my bliss. I need Ken’s to be better.
Last night, I made my usual salad but opted for Newman’s Own balsamic vinaigrette instead of the dregs of ranch that remained in what might be my very last bottle. Newman's makes a mean balsamic, tangy and bitey and sweet, so it was good, in the same way that oatmeal tastes good when I run out of maple syrup and decide to just forego the extra sugar. But my brain mourned the lack of saturated fat and preservatives. Full but not satisfied, I fired up the stove and brewed a mug of hot chocolate.
As I waited for my blend of unsweetened almond milk and Fairlife to bubble (I’m HEALTHY, remember?), I identified the root of the problem. It has nothing to do with history or health or narrative, ingredients or our national obesity crisis, or the perpetually yoga-ing health gurus on my Instagram.
The real problem is that Ken’s Ranch is already perfect, at least to me.
Michelle Delgado has covered teen girl antiheroes for Vox, belly dancing and cancer treatment recovery on The Atlantic, underground concerts for CityLab, and more. She also writes a weekly weird history newsletter. Find her on Twitter here!
August 31, 2023
In "Features"
