My Big Problem with the New Trader Joe’s Dip People Can’t Stop Talking About
Trader Joe’s has always been a happy place for me. I first stepped foot into one in 2009 and am nearing my 14th anniversary of shopping there regularly. There have been products I loved that disappeared and others that I didn’t enjoy, but never any I felt disgusted by — until its new Caesar Salad Dip hit shelves in late December.
It’s not because of the taste, per say, but how tasteless Trader Joe’s may have been in the development process (or dipvelopment process, I say as Dip Queen and author of cookbook Big Dip Energy, which came out in April 2024). They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but this feels like flat-out theft of my Caesar Salad Dip recipe, which was first shared on Instagram and TikTok back on January 23, 2023, while I was still in the dipvelopment process of creating my 88-recipe book of dips, dippers, and party food. It was also featured on KCRW’s Good Food podcast with host Evan Kleiman last April; the recipe was also published on KCRW’s website.
Once I saw the dip trending on TikTok last month, I screenshotted the label and zoomed in, clocking that it has the same exact ingredients, in nearly identical order (and therefore ratio) to my recipe. Yes, Caesar dressing is a commonly made and adapted recipe that I didn’t create, but I did use a unique ingredient and method of puréeing an entire head of romaine lettuce as the base of the dip. That was inspired by Aji Verde, a Peruvian green sauce I ate obsessively for years at restaurants in NYC, which uses lettuce blitzed in for lightness and brightness. It also helps the end dipscocity be not too heavy or thick because of the water content of the lettuce.
Big Dip Energy
Amazon
$18.94 (was $29.99)
No other blogs, food publications, or social videos of this technique or style of Caesar Salad Dip came up in late 2022 when I created this recipe (I checked thoroughly online). To date, a quick Google search of “Caesar salad dip” and “Caesar salad dip romaine lettuce” only result in recipes that are Caesar dressings with added chicken, cheese, cottage cheese, and other ingredients to make it more of a dip, plus methods of baking a hot dip and maybe topping with shredded lettuce. Exactly zero of those recipes have romaine lettuce as the first and main ingredient, except for mine and now Trader Joe’s.
I don’t have damning paper trails or concrete evidence of Trader Joe’s stealing, producing, and selling my original idea, but it just makes me feel … icky. Especially because I love Trader Joe’s and have always supported its dips. Maybe I should have known better.
I smell something fishy going on with Trader Joe’s production process, and it isn’t just anchovy paste.
I’ve seen small businesses get their products ripped off by Trader Joe’s, a few of which were detailed with interviews and evidence in an excellently reported piece at Taste (including Brooklyn Delhi’s Garlic Achaar Sauce, Auria’s Malaysian Kitchen’s Lime Leaf Sambal, and Fly By Jing’s Chili Crisp and Chili Crisp Hummus). In it, the founders share disturbingly similar stories: They were approached by Trader Joe’s to create a version of their products for the grocer’s own store brand. Then when the price wasn’t right nor fair for the original creators, Joe decided to create near-identical versions of those products and sell it for usually a fraction of the price. I didn’t package and sell my Caesar Salad Dip — yet — but if I do, it will now look like I copied Trader Joe’s.
There are a mixed bag of reviews online for the new dip, but it definitely has people talking (The Kitchn reviewed it earlier this month). When I tried it, I felt it was too thick in dipscocity where dragging a pita chip through it gave me dip resistance! At first bite, it had a strangely sour flavor, like too much acidity from the wrong place — fresh lemon juice is key for my dip.
The worst part was the abnormally large chunks of soggy, lifeless lettuce, akin to the spinach in spinach-artichoke dip. Trader Joe’s description claims it “might be our most ambitious experiment yet” with “finely shredded Romaine lettuce to give every bite some crisp, leafy contrast.” I beg to dipfer. (And so did a Reddit user who said: “Honestly I hate the texture of the lettuce shreds in there, and the flavor is wrong, too.”)
My Caesar Salad Dip has teeny tiny specks of green within the creamy dip that don’t hold a lot of flavor, but make it taste more like a complete Caesar salad rather than just replicating the flavors of the dressing. Dipping lettuce (especially when wrapped around a giant garlic bread crouton and stuffed with rotisserie chicken) into the dip is a salad inception. Double the salad, double the fun if you make my recipe, which I’m including here so you can enjoy how I envisioned it to taste.
This is a good reminder that Trader Joe’s isn’t known for reinventing the wheel — the grocer just knows how to get us caught spinning in one, and exert its power over less-established founders. I smell something fishy going on with Trader Joe’s production process, and it isn’t just anchovy paste. Give both a taste and tell me which Caesar you hail as the best.
Caesar Salad Dip
Serves 4 to 6
Ingredients
1 head romaine, roughly chopped, or 1 bag (7 ounces) chopped romaine (for lazy ease)
4 cloves garlic
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 1 lemon)
2 teaspoons anchovy paste or fish sauce
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons Worcestershire or soy sauce
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese (freshly grated or the pre-grated kind from the refrigerated section)
3/4 cup mayonnaise
3/4 cup sour cream
10 to 15 cranks black pepper, plus more to taste
kosher salt, to taste
Instructions
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Don’t let fear stop you — put that lettuce right into your food processor. Blitz it with the garlic until broken down into little bits, then add the lemon juice, anchovy paste, dijon, Worcestershire, and cheese. Run the motor again until the mixture is smooth and evenly combined. Add the mayonnaise and sour cream, then run it again until you have a creamy, green-speckled dip. Crack in as much black pepper as speaks to you and taste to see if it needs any salt (it shouldn’t, but you be the judge).
Pour the dip into an airtight container and let it sit in the fridge for at least 2 hours to firm up slightly to the right dipscosity. You can dip in right away, but it will be looser, more like a dressing or dipping sauce.
Recipe Notes
Recipe from BIG DIP ENERGY by Alyse Whitney. Copyright © 2024 by Alyse Whitney. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow Cookbooks, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Have you tried Trader Joe’s new Caesar salad dip? Tell us about it in the comments below.
Further Reading
The “Beautiful” $3 Flower Tumblers at Walmart People Are Buying 2 at a Time
The One Cookware Brand That Gordon Ramsay Can’t Stop Talking About
Reese’s Just Launched a Limited-Edition Peanut Butter Cup, and It Tastes 4x Better than the Original
