With salads, tacos, modified lobster sauce, tofu, steak, tater tots, and girl power, the staff at Lettuce Unite and Guerita’s Window in the skyway food court are giving Rochester food for body and mind.

Led by the team of chef Stef Crowson, Lindsay and LeeAnn Zubay, they are making salads fabulous and tacos unique.

Signature salads

With the salads, the women are focused on flavor and convenience. “We want to make it easy for people to bring it back to your desk,” says Lindsay.

At a desk, that process can turn tasty perfection to a mess, especially with their Elaine-Benes-big-salad-sized salads.

The menu features ten chef-created salads, curated with an emphasis on taste and accessibility for almost any diet. Gluten free, nut free, vegetarian, vegan, worldly, carnivorous, local-ingredient-only, and simple Midwestern diets all find a home on the menu.

Take your classic Steak and Potatoes, but as part of a hearty salad. The bowl is filled with sweet potatoes, cauliflower, roasted tomatoes, radishes, pickled red onions, and Dijon dressing.

Their seasonal salad, a grain bowl, specifically uses local farm ingredients.

“Our salads are filling,” says Stef. “You just need the salad. We incorporated the ingredients to make it a whole meal.”

Lettuce Unite’s skyway location is an ideal headquarters for people seeking a break from the chaotic lunch-rush. The lunch counter provides a bright, fresh environment, quick service, and menu that leaves the body energized.

“Lunch shouldn’t be serious,” says LeeAnn. “Look at our manifesto. We love to laugh. Humor is as important as flavor— justice and bats are blind, but your taste buds don’t have to be.”

They have even devised a way to beat the noon-hour lunch rush: online ordering. Between 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., patrons can select their salad online, pay, and find it waiting at a table with utensils. There are also a select few salads that are stocked in the cooler to grab and go.

Tasty tacos; they have those, too

Guerita’s Window began operating weeks after Lettuce Unite. The tacos were put together to grab the former Lunch Counter fans who loved the meaty sandwiches. There’s an Asian-influenced taco, with pork and slaw. Another with citrus chicken. The most traditional is a beef barbacoa taco. Each comes with a scoop of cilantro rice and, if requested, nom nom sauce.

Made from the spicy dressing at Lettuce Unite and mixed with mayonnaise and Sriracha, it’s similar to the lobster sauce served in Japanese restaurants. That sauce is known as ‘yum yum,’ and nom nom is Spanish for yum yum, thus the name.

Aside from nom nom sauce fiends, vegetarians and vegans are rallying hard for the place. Lindsay Zubay, herself a vegan, wants more options for her fellow-vegans than tater tots and French fries. Toward that end, both restaurants are hitting a new tofu horizon.

“Plant based eating is up by like 87 percent since last year. It’s not necessarily people who are vegetarian or vegan, it’s, like, normals or whatever,” quips Lindsay.

The counter is now also open for breakfast. Starting at 7:30 a.m., Lettuce Unite serves Greek yogurt bowls. At Guerita’s Window, breakfast tacos by the trio or alone, with a side of tater tots and nom nom sauce.

For a look at the menus ahead of time, follow this link.

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