I love a good vinaigrette. I mean love it — in the way one loves a very specific pen, or a particular font of sparkling water: a devoted, slightly niche affection, underlined with ritual. Every few months, usually on payday, when the world feels flush and possible, I make a pilgrimage to the fancy Italian sausage shop in the next neighborhood over and buy a new-to-me vinegar. White balsamic, pomegranate, one that tastes like garlic in a velvet cape. I like the drama. I like the tang. I like a dressing that makes your mouth do a little gasp.
Don’t get me wrong: I’ll happily eat a bowl of arugula with nothing but olive oil and lemon, feeling clean and little smug and mildly French, like a woman who writes her grocery lists on notecards and lives near a goat. But, and I think you may agree with me, there are few things more viscerally satisfying — more undeniably correct — than dragging a crisp radish slice or a ridged potato chip through something cold, creamy and tangy enough to make your salivary glands seize.
