It’s not just a Biloxi thing anymore. Where else in the US puts French dressing on pizza?
French dressing on top of pizza is no longer just a Mississippi Coast thing.
A few weeks ago, the Sun Herald published a history of topping pizza with the creamy, tangy salad dressing.
The tradition started at Hugo’s in Biloxi, where high schoolers would meet after school and football games and top their pizza pies with what they called “liquid cheese” back then.
The trend stuck in South Mississippi, with most Italian restaurants or pizza spots here offering French or a Catalina-style dressing to go with their pizzas. You can even get a version of the dressing at Domino’s and Pizza Hut when you order locally.
After the story was published online, people from across the United States emailed in and explained that they, too, enjoy French dressing atop their pizzas.
A reader who grew up in Robeson County, North Carolina, said students at his high school also ate French dressing on pizza.
“It never moved out of the school and into local restaurants but was very common at the lunch table,” he wrote. “Amazed to hear this exists somewhere else.”
Folks who live south of Chicago also partake in various French dressings on pizza.
There’s a chain pizza restaurant called Monicals Pizza that sells “sweet and tart, bright red French dressing and people drench their pizza in it,” Amanda Hogan said in an email. “I always thought it was weird and never partook but it is interesting to know it happens elsewhere.
Monicals has more than 60 restaurants in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Missouri. The first location opened in 1959.
Hogan said people who live in Chicago also ask their friends who live close to a Monicals to buy a bottle and mail it to them as well.
“I just wanted to share this piece of weird info that I always thought was a local thing,” she said.
