Pittsburgh Steak Salad with Warm Riviera Dressing
This Pittsburgh Steak Salad with Warm Riviera Dressing is filling, delicious, and loaded with steak, French fries, and veggies. Even “meat and potatoes” types will be happy having a salad for dinner! Plus, how fun is it to have French fries in your salad? This type of salad is served in local casual dining restaurants and diners all over the Buffalo, NY area (where I live), and it’s always been a favorite of mine. The warm riviera dressing is creamy, sweet, and tangy, and you’re probably going to want using it as a dip, sauce, or dressing for everything moving forward. Not only is this Pittsburgh Steak Salad with Warm Riviera Dressing absolutely delicious, but each satisfying entrée-sized serving is just 425 calories, or 8 WW Points on the current Weight Watchers program. To view your current WW Points for this recipe and track it in the WW app, click here!
A Pittsburgh Salad…but make it Buffalo
I live in the Buffalo, NY area, so about a four hour drive from Pittsburgh. However, it seems like so many of our local restaurant and diner menus feature a Pittsburgh Steak Salad. What makes the salad “Pittsburgh” you ask? I’m pretty sure it’s just the fact that there are French fries on it. Apparently in Pittsburgh this salad is usually eaten with ranch (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, Pittsburgh natives), but in Buffalo it’s almost always served with “warm Riviera dressing.” For years I have been wondering what is in this dressing. It’s like a creamy honey mustard, but not quite, and there are specs of black in it. It’s sweet and tangy and creamy. Eventually I found this reddit thread in which someone suggested mixing 2/3 parts honey mustard with 1/3 part poppyseed dressing and adding a bit of celery salt. I tried it and my husband and I both agreed that if that isn’t exactly it, it’s certainly close enough to fool us. It’s so good, and I’m excited that I can finally make a Pittsburgh Steak Salad with Warm Riviera Dressing at home!
Build To Serve
I love how easily this Pittsburgh Steak Salad comes together. You’ll stir together three ingredients to make the dressing, and pop the frozen French fries into your air fryer or oven. While those cook, you’ll slice and season the steak and cut up the tomatoes and cucumbers. The steak cooks in five minutes and then you just have to build the salads and eat! As with all salads, if you’re not using all four servings of this Pittsburgh Steak Salad at once, make sure to build the servings you are using and then store the different salad components separately, undressed. Then when you’re ready to make additional servings everything will still be fresh and ready to go. Also, only heat up the amount of French fries you’re using at the time. Each salad gets 2 oz (frozen weight) of French fries.
Ingredient Notes and Substitutions
- Steak: I love using flank steak in this recipe! It slices up easily and cooks into thin, tender slices that are full of flavor. If you have leftover steak it’s also great in tacos, on top of a baked potato, or in a wrap!
- French Fries: I used straight cut frozen French fries in this salad, because they cook quickly and just work really well in this recipe. I’ve also had this salad served with seasoned waffle fries in local restaurants, but those were more calories/WW Points, so I went with the unbattered straight cut fries. They taste great!
- Salad: I really like romaine lettuce for this particular salad, but if you have spring mix, spinach, green leaf, or any other type of lettuce or salad mix on hand already I’m sure it will also be delicious.
- Salad Dressings: I used Ken’s Lite Honey Mustard, which I’ve seen in all of my local grocery stores, and Panera at Home’s Poppyseed Dressing, which I also got at my local grocery store. They mixed together perfectly and with the added celery salt it really tastes like the warm Riviera dressing I’ve had when dining out! I’m sure you could use other brands of either with delicious results, I just wanted to note the types I used.
More Tasty, Lightened-Up Salad Recipes
For more light and tasty salad recipes, check out my Black and Blue Steak Salad, Beef Taco Salad, Mediterranean Chicken Chopped Salad, Southwest Steak Salad, Buffalo Roasted Chickpea Salad, Mexican Street Corn Chicken Salad, Cobb Salad, Superfood Salad, Barbecue Ranch Chicken Salad, Thai Chicken Chopped Salad with Peanut Dressing, Strawberry Steak Salad, Broccoli Salad, Avocado Bacon Corn Panzanella Salad, Butternut Squash Quinoa Salad, Antipasto Salad, Harvest Apple Salad, Doritos Taco Salad, Greek Orzo Pasta Salad, Chicken Souvlaki Salad and many more in the salad section of my recipe index!
Pittsburgh Steak Salad with Warm Riviera Dressing
Ingredients
- 5 ⅓ tablespoons light honey mustard dressing , that's 5 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon (I used Ken’s Lite Honey Mustard)
- 8 teaspoons poppyseed dressing, (I used Panera Bread at Home brand)
- ¼ teaspoon celery salt
- 8 oz frozen straight cut fries, (frozen weight)
- 1 lb uncooked lean, trimmed flank steak, cut into thin strips
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon onion powder
- ½ teaspoon paprika
- 1 tablespoon canola or vegetable oil
- 12 cups chopped romaine lettuce
- 1 cup chopped cherry tomatoes
- 1 cup chopped cucumbers
- ½ cup shredded 2% milk sharp cheddar cheese
Instructions
- In a small bowl, stir together the honey mustard, poppyseed dressing, and celery salt to make the dressing and set aside to let the flavors combine.
- Cook the frozen French fries according to package instructions. I made mine in the air fryer while I cooked the steak!
- Place the steak strips into a mixing bowl and sprinkle with ½ teaspoon each of the salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and paprika. Stir until the steak is coated with the seasoning.
- Bring one tablespoon of oil to medium heat in a large skillet. Add the seasoned steak strips and stir to coat with the oil. Cook, stirring/flipping occasionally, for 5-6 minutes until the steak is cooked to taste.
- When ready to serve, place the dressing in the microwave and heat on high for 15-20 seconds or until warm and stir.
- To build each salad*, place 3 cups of lettuce into a bowl and top with ¼ cup of tomatoes, ¼ cup of cucumbers, and 2 tablespoons of shredded cheddar. Drizzle each salad with two tablespoons of the warm riviera dressing. Top each salad with ¼ of the steak (for me this was about 2.8 ounces cooked) and ¼ of the French fries (about 1.4 ounces for me) and serve.*Build each salad to serve! If you’re only serving one or two salads at a time, I’d recommend only cooking the amount of French fries you’ll need (each salad gets 2 oz frozen weight) and only dress the ones you’re serving. Store the leftover components (steak, dressing, cucumbers, tomatoes, cheese) separately in the fridge until you’re ready to use.
Notes
425 calories, 32 g carbs, 11 g sugars, 19 g fat, 5 g saturated fat, 31 g protein, 4 g fiber, 622 mg sodium (from myfitnesspal.com) Weight Watchers Points Plus:
11 per serving (PP calculated using a Weight Watchers PointsPlus calculator and the nutrition info)
Western PA native here. Yes, this salad would usually be served with ranch dressing. In fact, many of the people I know eat ranch on pretty much everything, including French fries and pizza. I’m not a huge fan, so I’m excited to try your Buffalo version!
I’m not a big ranch girl either! I hope you end up liking it better with the riviera dressing. Thanks for the comment!
Yinzer here….traditionally it was served with Sweet and Sour dressing which is a lot like the dressing you use in this recipe. I think ranch is what’s used mostly now because Ranch is everywhere. There is also a version of this salad that is just meat, cheese, fries and dressing.
Thanks Kelly! I was hoping to hear from a Pittsburgh native. Good to know!
I am a Pittsburgher and have always had these salads with ranch. This style of salad seemed completely normal to me until I started traveling to other places and saw it on menus with the “Pittsburgh” label. Ha ha.
That’s how I felt about Pizza Logs, which are super common in Buffalo but I had no idea were a regional thing. I posted a lightened up recipe for them years ago assuming they were universally known and was blown away to find that they weren’t!