Good Taste Took Marie's From Greenwood Basement To Top Of Salads Nationwide

I have been in love with one Marie in my life, although I only met her once. She owned Marie's Cafe out on Northwest 85th and Greenwood.

You see, that is where Marie's salad dressings were born. I have always loved Marie's dressings, which were made in the basement of Marie's Cafe. It was a wondrous time, back in the 1950s.

Marie (I can't remember her last name) had a cook out of Oregon, man named Harold Smith. Mr. Smith concocted a fabulous blue-cheese salad dressing.

When he got to Marie's, he began making the stuff. They would sell it across the counter at the restaurant.

Soon enough, Smith got callouses on his hand from tightening caps on bottles filled with Marie's Blue Cheese Dressing. That's how popular it became.

As you can see, we are leading into one of my passions - success stories about small businesses.

Anyway, one of Marie's restaurant customers was Bill Boitano, who had an open market across the street. To keep a hometown flavor, I must mention that Bill Boitano is the older brother of John Boitano, a famous Garfield High coach.

Bill said to Marie: "Look, you are holding up your restaurant customers who want to pay their checks.

"Too many people are buying bottles of blue-cheese dressing. Bring some bottles over to me and I will put them in my lettuce section."

Well, what with one thing and another, Mr. Smith bought out Marie's. He took in a partner named Werner Ferber, a plastering contractor.

Then a friend named Larry Parker began selling Marie's to the old Tradewell market chain. He sold Marie's all around the Puget Sound area and on up to Port Angeles.

Smith kept turning out this dressing in Marie's basement. Pretty soon he had so many bottles and boxes that there was no place for the kitchen help to peel potatoes.

They eventually put in a mixing and bottling plant out near Aurora, not far from Marie's restaurant. Smith began developing more recipes and by 1964, Marie's Blue Cheese, the star of the show, was grossing $950,000 a year.

So it was that an ex-cook became president of Marie's Inc. and everybody, including the original Marie, came down half-rich.

I have always been crazy about any product produced by Marie's. In a spirit of nostalgia, I called Marie's and found that the former salesman, Larry Parker, now heads the company and both Smith and Marie are in their 80s and retired. He's living in Edmonds and she's in North Seattle. (Note to editor: Her name is Nordquist - no relation to Skippy of Mariner fame.)

To talk to Larry Parker I had to drive clear out to Enumclaw. I expected to find a huge factory with some Mercedes Benz luxury cars parked outside.

"We got crowded out of our plant near Aurora," Larry explained. "We moved our plant out here in 1987. The Enumclaw people have been terrific."

"When we moved here," Larry said, "every employee moved with us. We've got 10 employees, a couple part-time. We have four men mixing and bottling Marie's and each can do the other's job."

Marie's now produces 22 dressings, including things like peach glaze and apple glaze. They ship all over the Northwest - Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska.

The 22 dressings also include ranch, poppy seed, Roquefort, tartar sauce, creamy Caesar and thousand island.

A couple of years ago, Consumer Reports rated its creamy Italian dressing the best on the market.

Marie's Blue Cheese Dressing is the No. 1-selling refrigerated dressing in America.

"They have to be refrigerated because we are the only dressing producer that uses no additives," Larry said. "No sugar, no coloring, no preservatives, no stabilizers."

There are two other Marie's factories, one in Woodland, Calif., another in Thornton, Ill. The plant in Thornton is now owned by Campbell Soup. In other words, from the basement of Marie's Cafe, they go all over the United States.

The place in Illinois is big. "They look like an oil refinery, we look like a bakery," Larry said.

"Look at this," he added, holding out an empty jar. "See that figure of the pretty girl. That's Marie. Our Illinois people said, `How can you use a caricature of a cocktail waitress on your bottles?'

"I said,`That's no cocktail waitress. Look, she's wearing a chef's hat.' "

Larry said they will lose the Betty Boop-type figure anyway. New government regulations state that all ingredients and nutrition information must be on the bottle.

It's sad to hear in a way. Marie, the woman I've always loved, will be crowded off the jar.

Emmett Watson's column appears Sunday and Thursday in the Local section of The Times.