The Machus Red Fox Salad was once served at the swanky Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield, Michigan. It is a simple chopped salad with wedges of ripe tomatoes, rings of red onion, crumbled roquefort and chopped crisp bacon. What truly makes the salad [besides the bacon and blue cheese] is the dressing. It’s a super simple, light and sweet dressing that brings all these wonderful ingredients together.

While I was chatting with my mom on the phone about her Detroit-style pizza recipe, she also told me how she loved [she still loves to actually] to recreate recipes at home — that apple doesn’t fall to far from the tree.

My mom told me about the time when she read a request in the Royal Oak Tribune food section, that someone was looking for the recipe to the Machus Red Fox Salad. First of all, this was before internet, before food blogs and before a simple entry into the  Google search bar could answer your question in seconds. People turned to their local newspaper and had to wait and hope to find an answer. Huh. Imagine that.

Of course, my mom had already made a copycat version of the Machus Red Fox Salad dressing and replied back to the newspaper, I’m assuming via postal mail and The Tribune printed my mom’s recipe in the newspaper, giving her full credit. My mom still has the clipping attached to a recipe card. How cool is that??

I asked my mom for that recipe too and she texted me a snapshot of the article.

Later that night, I was thinking about our phone call and wondered how did a salad get the name Machus Red Fox? There had to be a story there, right? It was too late to text my mom, so I did a quick Google search [bless you technology!] and what I found out, made her story even cooler that it already was. From what I found/read, the Red Fox was a hip restaurant in it’s prime during the 60’s and 70’s  (and eventually closed in 1996) that mainly wealthy people frequented. It also is the last place Jimmy Hoffa was seen at.

So I’m only guessing here, but I think this is the restaurants “house salad” and I can totally see why. It’s the perfect salad for just about anything. It’s light and delicious and the perfect starter or side salad to any meal. I made it and served it with my Detroit-style pizza and it was delicious.

It makes a large salad so it’s a great salad to feed a crowd. But you could easily scale it down.

The dressing though is where the money is at.

Crumbled roquefort, sliced red onion, ripe tomato wedges and crispy chopped bacon. I totally get why people loved this salad.

The dressing is SO simple: into a jar or container that has a tight-fitting lid, combine 1/3 cup granulated sugar, 1/3 cup white vinegar, 1/4 cup olive oil (back then they used salad oil but what is that exactly? jk) and 1 teaspoon kosher salt.

Shake the dressing really well so the sugar has a chance to dissolve.

In a large bowl combine 1 medium head of chopped romaine with 1 head of chopped iceberg lettuce. If serving immediately, toss with enough of the dressing to lightly coat the leaves, not drench the lettuce. If making in advance, do this right before serving.

Then top those dressed greens with wedges of tomatoes (I used campari), the chopped crisp bacon pieces, crumbles of blue cheese and slices of red onion.

Serve with extra dressing on the side.

Enjoy! And if you give this Machus Red Fox Salad recipe a try, let me know! Snap a photo and tag me on twitter or instagram!

My cookbook Simply Scratch : 120 Wholesome Homemade Recipes Made Easy is now available! CLICK HERE for details and THANK YOU in advance!

[this post contains affiliate links.]

The post Machus Red Fox Salad appeared first on Simply Scratch.