BOSTON — Over the last week, they say, Logan International Airport’s Terminal E has served as host to a dealer of sorts.
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As travelers hustle toward the security checkpoint, they pass a man with a suitcase. And for the jersey-clad among them, leaving the country on the heels of their favorite teams’ World Cup exits, what that suitcase beholds is worth stopping for.
“He had a sign that said, ‘Buy ranch packets here,’” said Alex Bauer, a 26-year-old Germany fan, who noticed the vendor when he arrived at Logan from Munich last week. “I didn’t even know what a ranch packet is then. [But] after being here for a week, I’m going to buy him out.”
“Who cares if we lose?” he went on. “I’ve found ranch dressing.”
Every World Cup acts as a cultural melting pot, introducing an array of visitors to the host nation’s traditions and touchpoints. In 2022, machboos, a Qatari rice-and-meat item, glided its way into the diet of Argentines and Frenchmen alike. When one’s team is competing, its fans must continue to consume, oftentimes on a budget, which drifts them to the true national cuisines of their hosts.
So, yes, cheesesteaks and wings find new fans. As do a New York slice and an oily paper bag of Five Guys fries. But at the edge of each table, what barely registers in the American mind has become both the symbol of U.S. consumption and the hottest commodity in a visitor’s possession:
Ranch.
The scenes are jarring: a group of England-jerseyed supporters strutting into the New York subway, each with a Hidden Valley bottle in hand; a Panama fan chugging a handle of ranch before entering Newark International Airport after his team’s loss; and that German man, blissfully unaware how quickly his beloved team would send him back to his pathetic ranch-less existence, bragging about his Hidden Valley bottle count.
“I’ve consumed, probably, three bottles of ranch dressing this week,” Bauer said. “I’ve had more bottles of ranch dressing than I’ve been to games. I drank straight from it this morning.”
That’s a common misconception among Americans, he said, viewing ranch as a condiment.
“If we had this stuff back home,” he continued, “I would genuinely never stop eating it, drinking it, showering in it. It’d be an addiction.”
For Paraguayan couple José and Sofi Mandelina, in Los Angeles to see their countrymen during group play, it all began when they asked for a salad at a fast-casual Mediterranean spot in Hollywood. The server’s response baffled them.
“‘They asked if we preferred ranch or Caesar,’” Sofi said this week in Boston, where Paraguay bounced Bauer’s Germany. “I thought it was a language, you know, difference.”
Ten minutes later, their leaves were coated with dairy. They stared for a bit, wondering whether it was yogurt. Having In-N-Outed themselves to their guts’ demise, they decided to press forward.
By the end of the meal, Jose said, he was looking at deals on Hidden Valley on Amazon. Upon digging a bit deeper, he learned that one of his supermarkets back home carries it, though in small quantities. Many other visitors don’t find the same success.
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What’s made ranch dressing such an attraction for visitors is its scarcity elsewhere, especially in Europe. Salad there is, for reasons mysterious to many Americans, consumed as fresh-picked greens. In the United States, “eating your vegetables takes some encouragement,” mused Sarah Wassberg Johnson, a museum professional and food historian.
“What Americans and Europeans agree on, though, is their stubbornness to try new things,” she continued, though she admitted that often briefly subsides while vacationing. “Their food habits have came along perpendicular to one another in more recent times, and they often butt heads in style. Americans like to dip, which isn’t as much of a thing elsewhere. Americans also are significantly more dairy-prone.”
In that sense, ranch is a fitting representative of the American food stereotype: dairy-laden and typically a means to elevate another food. In turn, European cuisine hasn’t adopted it.
“I thought it was a tartar kind of deal at first,” Bauer said. He doesn’t believe he has ever seen ranch on a store shelf in Munich, where he lives. “Oil. You put oil on your salad, and you suck it up.”
The World Cup, then, in all of its melting-pot power, could be a leaping-off point for ranch. Hidden Valley, one of the leading ranch dressing producers, has begun setting up pop-up shops outside games. Another producer, Kraft, is looking into a “TSA-compliant” option to sell in quart-size bags.
Before moving to the U.S. for college, Luis Rodríguez attended every one of the Panama team’s home games. He’d been gone for a few years now, so when he saw the World Cup draw, he pounced, laying down $1,300 for a ticket to see Panama play England in New York New Jersey Stadium.
Before the game, he met some friends who’d flown in from Panama — and was shocked to find them raving about ranch dressing. “The salad dressing?” Rodríguez questioned. “I was so confused. I see this thing every day.”
But they couldn’t get enough of it, hassling their favorite chatbot for restaurants known to serve ranch with their entrées.
By the time the game began, they were hooked, and after two hours in the New Jersey rain, England won 2-0 and sent Panama home. That’s when Rodríguez’s friends learned that they couldn’t fly out of Newark with an 8-ounce bottle of ranch dressing, which is 4.6 glorious ounces more than TSA allows. So on the curb of the airport, he said, they drank the bottles dry. Depressed by the evening’s result, Rodríguez even aided their effort.
“That was the most shameful thing I’ve ever done,” he admitted the next day. “But, honestly, the stuff is pretty good.”
After Germany’s early exit, Bauer is headed home on Wednesday. Back at Logan, he’ll look for the packet dealer. But he’s unconvinced that the dry versions will live up to the real deal. So he hopes to find some beyond the security checkpoint and buy whatever he can.
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“A tribute,” he proclaimed, “to the summer I learned of ranch.”
