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Years ago, while working at my very first job out of college, I was part of a group of co-workers who regularly went out to dinner on Friday nights after work. It was a fun way to wrap up the work week and begin the weekend!

One of our regular spots to eat was a small, local restaurant called the NewBridge Café located just north of Boston in Chelsea, Massachusetts. The Zagat-rated NewBridge Café had a reputation for making fantastic steak tips and an excellent antipasto salad that was served with a fantastic vinaigrette!

Fast forward 20+ years later – and I decided to take my husband Jack out to eat at the NewBridge Café for the first time a few weeks ago. The steak tips were just as good as I remember – but what really captured Jack’s interest (and taste buds) was the red wine vinaigrette served with the antipasto!

(And of course – like we often do – we were determined to try recreating that vinaigrette at home!)

This red wine vinaigrette is totally unique! It is quite sweet and very tangy (and perfect with the zesty and salty antipasto), and we also noticed how it quickly and naturally separated in the cruet on the dinner table – much more so than a typical vinaigrette.

We suspected that the NewBridge Café’s red wine vinaigrette was made with something other than just oil and red wine vinegar (plus a generous amount of sugar and seasonings). A big flavor clue for us was that the antipasto salad had pickled red onions on top with a similar sweet and tangy flavor – so we guessed that the dressing might have pickle juice in the mix!

So – I don’t know for sure how close we’ve come to recreating the original – but our Copycat NewBridge Café Red Wine Vinaigrette is very, very similar to that delicious vinaigrette we enjoyed last month.

(If you are local to Boston and have eaten at the NewBridge Café – let us know what you think!)