At an office Thanksgiving potluck in Dallas last month, employees showed off their home cooking (and their catered shortcuts): There was spicy mac and cheese and roasted brussels sprouts, candied bacon and gumbo.
Then, a woman held up a vat of mint-green fluff in a pan. Behold: The Watergate Salad.
“It’s just a staple of our Thanksgiving,” said Kelly McDuff, 26, who brought the dish. “So I thought it was a staple at everybody’s.”
“And then,” she said, “I realized it wasn’t.”
Few of her colleagues had tried Watergate salad, an ambrosia-adjacent dish usually made with pistachio pudding mix, Cool Whip, pecans, mini marshmallows and canned, crushed pineapple. (Some also include maraschino cherries or coconut.) They were curious — amused even.
And eventually millions of others were, too. After Ms. McDuff posted a TikTok video of the potluck, the salad is having a renaissance online. Her video has been viewed more than 18 million times.
And it’s having a ripple effect: While interest in Watergate salad tends to peak around Thanksgiving — last November, there were about 200,000 Google searches for the term — this year those queries nearly doubled.
It’s a perfect storm of internet virality: There’s the appeal of holiday nostalgia for those in the know, and then there’s the morbid curiosity of the uninitiated.
