Dressed to the Nines

Nothing is more comforting than stumbling upon that one product that just works. That one product you know you’ll stick to forever because it is so good/dependable. Well, a few months ago, I found the perfect salad dressing: Wish-Bone’s Light Asian with Sesame and Ginger Vinaigrette.

Personally, this is quite a find being that salad is my staple food. I’m a lazy pesco-vegetarian. The last thing I want to do when I get home is spend time in the kitchen and prepare myself a decent meal. So more often than not, I would just toss a salad and call it a night. (Contrary to popular belief, well-prepared salads are filling!) The variable ingredient is the dressing, which I think is what makes the salad. Yet for the longest time, I had not found “the one,” that elusive dressing that would complete my salad.

My favorite flavor (by a mile) is Asian but, unfortunately, it is a rarity in our supermarkets. This I find ironic because Asian is a basic dressing and… aren’t we in Asia? If we can stock up on Italian or French, shouldn’t we have Asian too/first?

To be honest, I’m not much of a fan of the usual dressings like Thousand Island, Caesar, and Honey Mustard. I’m lucky if I chance on Kraft’s Catalina dressing or Sun-Dried Tomato vinaigrette but on most days, I make do with Clara Olé’s Orange You Glad or Dizon Farm’s variants. All these dressings are fine companions… but they don’t make the salad, at least for me.

So last October, at Makati Supermarket, Alabang Town Center, I was ecstatic to discover how well-stocked the salad dressing aisle was. And the place carried several variants of Wish-Bone salad dressing! But the icing on the cake was finding a big bottle of Asian, which was reasonably priced at ~P200. If you followed The Apprentice: Martha Stewart (which was a flop, but that’s a different story), you might remember the challenge where the two teams had to make their own limited edition Wish-Bone salad dressing and then sell their stuff at the supermarket. Bethenny, the resident chef of her team, confidently whipped up her own version of Asian. Watching her in her element was amazing! The other team relied on Marcela, who prepared a rosemary and lime dressing. Martha liked both dressings but you could tell she loved Bethenny’s more. In the end, however, it was Marcela’s team that sold more bottles and therefore won the challenge. But I digress. My point is, watching that episode made me crave so bad for those salad dressings and — seven years later — I finally lucked into a bottle of Wish-Bone Asian! I thought to myself: it isn’t Bethenny’s masterpiece, but it will do.

Oh but it definitely did.

Usually, it takes months for me to finish a big bottle of dressing. But this one? I consumed in three weeks. It was THAT good. The vinaigrette was thick (which I prefer to the watery type), golden, and bursting with robust flavors — zesty, tangy, sweet, and spicy. The sesame was nutty, and the ginger, just the right amount of pungent. The bits of onion and garlic added a nice texture. Of course it helped that I had the freshest lettuce from S&R at the time, but even when I switched back to the (not-so-high grade) greens from the local grocery, my salad was still an experience because of this Wish-Bone dressing. It definitely completed it.

Unfortunately, it was out of stock at Makati Supermarket the next time I visited so I just settled for the Russian and Robusto Italian flavors. They were good, but still a far cry from my new favorite. I liked the Robusto Italian better than the Russian though.

So for the past months, I’ve been on the lookout for this particular Wish-Bone dressing. I’ve scoured practically every supermarket and deli (here and abroad) but to no avail. Even my mum and sister have kept their eyes peeled open for this specific flavor. They would text me that they spotted Wish-Bone this and Wish-Bone that, but unfortunately no Asian.

So please help me out: where might I find this elusive vinaigrette?