This salad doesn't exist.
Has to be the only one in the world.
Heyo!!
Did you know that French fries on a salad fucking rule? It’s true.
I find myself writing about the same topics often—potato chips, Italian sandwiches, pasta, weird regional dishes, and more. Lately I’ve tried to tackle subjects outside of my comfort zone, but eventually I always come back to the hits.
I’ve written about Pittsburgh salads too many times. I’ve got a recipe for it here and an overview of them here (Wikipedia even referenced this article, nice.) I’ll talk about these french fry littered salads to anyone who’ll listen.
Hell, if you want to, you can even watch me make a Pittsburgh salad. You sicko. That’s what you like, huh? To watch.
For me, the move is always French fries on a salad. If a place doesn’t serve it, I find a way to make it happen on my own, ordering them separately at restaurants and fast food drive-throughs, then piling one on top of the other.
Yes—being a Western Pennsylvania native, the salad is nostalgia for me, but also I’m just a practical advocate for potatoes on salads, and, what’s more, warm potatoes on a salad. They add warmth, fat, nourishment, and texture. Fries taste great with creamy dressing and forkfuls of salad accoutrements like olives, onions, tomatoes, and cucumbers, too.
Most of the time, you see Pittsburgh salads made with grilled chicken, fresh cut fries, and shredded cheese. Sometimes you can sub the chicken for steak.
However, there’s a salad in my hometown of New Castle, Pennsylvania that I think is the only salad of its kind. I’m serious. I don’t know where else you’d find this salad on planet earth: It’s two very specific cultures intersecting with one another: Western Pennsylvania and Syria.
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The “kibbee” salad at Cedars is one of one.
“There’s a lot of Middle Eastern culture in New Castle,” says Andrew Kladitis, 46, an employee of Cedars, “Kibbeh is one of those things that stuck. We always had kibbeh, Syrian bread, lamb, and garlic sauce on the menu.”
For the uninitiated, Kibbeh is a meatball-esque, stuffed fried oval of ground beef or lamb, bulgur wheat, onions, and spices, and its a mainstay in the city of New Castle. And Cedars, a decades-old bar and restaurant in its melting pot South Side area, is the only place in town pairing it with a french fry laden salad.
Syrian and Lebanese settlement started in New Castle around 1900. Like many towns in Western Pennsylvania, steel and tin production brought in immigrants from all over the world. By 1940, New Castle’s Levant community was well-developed, and today their impact on the town’s food culture is ever-present.
Bars and restaurants all over New Castle serve fried kibbeh and lamb sandwiches with cold drafts of Yuengling. At Cascade Park, a once thriving theme park in the early 20th century that now sits dilapidated, families pick wild grape leaves and stuff them into plastic shopping bags to make dolmades at home. Local Greek Orthodox churches bake and sell Syrian-style bread, and toum has a place among stalwart American condiments on most picnic tables during the Summer. Even at Mister B’s, a six pack to-go store and restaurant, a bright neon sign in the window advertises “Lamb & Smelts.” Everywhere you look, there’s a seamless integration of Syrian and Lebanese cuisine into Western Pennsylvania culture.
It only makes sense that kibbeh eventually found a home on top of a Pittsburgh salad.
At Cedars, this singular salad is mountainous. Crunchy iceberg with cubed tomatoes and cucumbers add refreshment, pungent slices of thickly sliced onions provide bite, and sliced black olives offer briny funk. Then there’s the French fries, which are decidedly bar-style—fresh cut, skin on, and earthy. A mound of shredded cheese is clumped on top of the fries for good measure. Under all the potatoes and cheese lie pieces of aromatic kibbeh spiced generously with cumin. The bulgar wheat and ground meat mixture is fried to crispy perfection, while the inside is savory and moist. The salad itself towers, almost creating a steeple-like image.
I am, admittedly, a New Castle native championing this local dish. Cedars was once owned by my great Uncle, Frank Palumbo, and my grandma Eleanor worked in the kitchen as a cook. Thirty years ago, she made the kibbeh for Cedars herself, where she assembled hundreds of these salads. She may have been one of the first people to do so, though the definitive origins of this peculiar meal are unknown.
Cedars is the only place in New Castle serving a kibbeh Pittsburgh salad, and they might be the only restaurant in the world doing so, too. If Cedars closes, the salad itself might shutter with it.
Where else might this salad exist but at this one bar in New Castle? Pittsburgh salads don’t migrate very far outside of Western Pennsylvania, and even then, none of them feature fried kibbeh on top.
And sure, plenty of shawarma plates in the Middle East feature French fries, but in Lebanon and Syria, they simply don’t put fries and kibbeh on salads and then serve them with salad dressings like ranch and Italian. It is decidedly American to pile a bunch of different shit into a bowl and slop it up.
I can confidently say that there is nowhere else in the world that this salad exists. It doesn’t exist, unless you’re willing to travel to my little podunk hometown.
If you want to make the salad at home, I’ll include a recipe below:
Put your own spin on this Levant-Western Pennsylvania mash-up as you see fit. After all, a Pittsburgh salad is best when it’s an expression of culture. Food triumphs when communities intersect in wonderfully weird ways, filling in the sidewalk cracks in neighborhoods built by immigrants.
Recipe For Pittsburgh Kibbeh Salad
This is a modified version of my Grandmother’s recipe for fried kibbeh. For the ground beef, get the lowest fat content available, and ask your butcher to grind it finely. In New Castle, you can call ahead and order “kibbeh meat” from most grocery stores, and they’ll grind it for you. If not, grind your beef in a food processor at home. Pulse it for a minute or so until it forms a thin paste.
For the salad, add vegetables and accoutrement as you see fit. Boiled eggs, olives, celery, and seasonal vegetables work great. Salad is an expression.
For The Outer Kibbeh
1 cup fine bulgur wheat
1 pound finely ground beef
1 medium onion, diced
½ teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons parsley chopped
1 tablespoon mint, chopped
For The Kibbeh Filling
1/2 pound finely ground beef
1/2 medium onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon parsley, chopped
1/2 tablespoon mint, chopped
1/4 cup pine nuts
2 tablespoons butter
1 quart vegetable oil for frying
More salt + pepper to taste
For The Salad
1 pound fresh cut fries, or frozen French fries like Ora-Ida Golden or Lamb Weston Hand Cut
1 medium head iceberg lettuce, about 1 ½ pounds, chopped and rinsed
1 fresh tomato, cut into chunks
½ medium English cucumber (6 to 8 ounces), sliced thinly
½ cup pickled banana peppers
½ medium red onion, sliced thinly
salad dressing as desired
To Make The Kibbeh
Soak 1 cup bulgur wheat with 3 cups of cold water for one hour. Strain through a fine mesh sieve lined with a cheesecloth. Try to get as much moisture as possible out from the bulgar wheat.
Mix together the ground beef, bulgar wheat, onion, cumin, salt, pepper, parsley, and mint in a large bowl with enough room to work. Knead the mixture together with your hands, folding it into itself until the ingredients are totally incorporated and you’re left with a ball that resembles dough. About 5 minutes. Cover and set aside in the fridge to chill for at least one hour, or for best results, overnight.
For The Kibbeh Filling
In a small pan on medium heat, add the pine nuts and 1 tablespoon of butter. Season with a small pinch of salt. Toast the pine nuts while stirring with a rubber spatula, about 5-7 minutes. Set the pine nuts aside in a bowl.
In the same small pan, add the onions and another tablespoon of butter. Saute until translucent, about 5-7 minutes. Make a little well in the center of the pan, pushing the onions to the rim, and add the diced bell pepper. Cook the bell pepper until soft, about 3 minutes. Mix thoroughly with the onion. Set aside in a separate bowl.
Now, add one tablespoon of vegetable oil and the finely ground beef to the pan. Season generously with salt and pepper. Cook thoroughly, making sure to chop up any chunky bits of beef with the flat end of a spatula. Another 5-7 minutes. Combine the ground beef, pine nuts, pepper, onion, cumin, ½ teaspoon of salt, pepper, parsley, and mint into a medium sized mixing bowl. Taste and sason with more salt and pepper if needed. Put the bowl into the fridge to cool for one hour.
To Form the Kibbeh Balls
Have a small bowl of cold water ready to help form the kibbeh balls.
Take 3 oz. of the kibbeh shell mixture, and flatten it into the palm of your hand. Now place one tablespoon of kibbeh filling into the center. Close the shell mixture around the filling. Start to roll the kibbeh around your palm longways. Using your fingertips, wet the kibbeh with some of the water to smooth out any cracks in the kibbeh. Form into a smooth, sealed oval shape.
Note: If there’s too much filling, the ball will have a hard time closing. This should make 10-12 kibbeh
To Fry
Heat the vegetable oil in a small frying pot to 350 degrees. Fry 2-3 kibbeh at a time for 5 minutes, or until golden brown.
To Assemble The Salad
Fry, bake, or air fry the French fries to package directions. If using homemade French fries, use the same oil that you used to fry the kibbeh.
Divide salad ingredients into two bowls or plates. Add a generous helping of French fries to each salad. Cut four kibbeh in half, and divide the halves onto the rim of each salad plate.
Serve with salad dressing.
That’s it! Thanks for reading The Move! French fries on a salad always hits. I hope you’ll experience it at home: with or without kibbeh.