“Salad dressing” is a misleading name. The name pigeon holes these amazing dressings as just a topping for lettuce. Does dressing make eating leafy greens tolerable? Yes. But dressing also tastes great poured on bread, french fries and, of course, pizza – let that marinate as you peruse my list of the best salad dressings in Charlotte.

7. Hot bacon dressing: Moosehead

When I asked the owner what’s in Moosehead’s hot bacon dressing he replied “Bacon.” So there you have it.

Best served on: Garden salad with grilled chicken.

6. Great Hill blue cheese vinaigrette: Carpe Diem

Blue cheese vinaigrette might sound weird, but Carpe Diem uses super fancy non-homogenized raw milk blue cheese to make a lighter, healthier version of the classic.


Best served on: Grilled grape salad.

5. Homemade blue cheese: McKoy’s Smokehouse

Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about the high-calorie, creamy blue cheese. McKoy’s house-made blue cheese is on this list purely for its chunkiness factor. You can even buy it by the pint for $6.99.

Best served on: McKoy’s loaded fries. But I guess if you’re trying to be healthy you could also put it on McKoy’s smokehouse salad.

4. Honey-apple cider vinaigrette: Midwood Smokehouse

I’ll be honest, this dressing doesn’t really taste like apple cider, but it does taste really good with all the corn, avocado, croutons and cheddar cheese that Midwood packs into their salads.

Best served on: Midwood chopped salad.

3. Homemade ranch: Beef N Bottle

You can’t go wrong with any of Beef N Bottle’s homemade dressings, but their insanely thick ranch tastes best on their salad and on top of the free crackers they bring to your table.

Best served on: Traditional salad topped with every vegetable they give you. Ask for extra cherry tomatoes, they never give you enough cherry tomatoes.

2. Maple vinaigrette: Fig Tree

Everything at Fig Tree is delicious, so it’s no surprise that their maple vinaigrette made the list. Their house salad usually comes with some herb vinaigrette crap, so make sure you specify that you want maple vinaigrette.

Best served on: Baby spinach salad with a hard-boiled quail egg and bacon. Go all out and add goat cheese for $2.

Portofino’s house dressing is the best dressing in Charlotte, hands down. I found out that their secret recipe contains garlic, tomato, basil and other magical ingredients that I promised not to talk about.

Best served on: Literally anything. Ask for extra, and use it for bread dunking.